COMPARISON OF COGNITIVE ABILITIES BETWEEN MUSICIANS AND NON-MUSICIANS

Existing body of knowledge demonstrates that musicians experience improved mental abilities than non-musicians in variety of mental ability tasks. The present study made a comparison of cognitive abilities (immediate auditory and visual memory, auditory and visual working memory load, spatial thinking ability and cognitive information processing) between musicians (N=30, 19 males and 11 females) and non-musicians (N=30, 10 males and 20 females) of Nepal. All participants had similar level of education. The mean age of the participants from the musical group was M=26.97 years (SD= 3.285) and from non-musical group was M=23.83 years (SD= 1.487). Series of tests including Immediate Span of Memory (Visual and Auditory), Visual and Auditory n-back tasks, Cross Section Test and Digit Symbol Test (WAIS Form I) were performed. The results showed no significant difference in any of the aforementioned cognitive tasks between the two groups. Participants who did not perform well in one task could not perform well in other similar tasks also. Results from the present study indicate that intelligence perhaps may not be a unitary construct as it possibly could be affected by variables including cultural framework, level of educational experience and increase in age. In spite of the fact that studies such as these are mostly conducted in the western context, comprehensive analysis of the non-western cultures may as well provide wealth of unexplored knowledge on music cognition. Nonetheless, this study tried to explore the probable causes for the variability of results between the West and the East.