This is a really badly designed study. I started playing violin when I was 4 and started performing professionally when I was 7, and continued to do so for 20 y

This is a really badly designed study. I started playing violin when I was 4 and started performing professionally when I was 7, and continued to do so for 20 years. Learning to play an instrument or sing is not the same as studying pitch differentiation or rhythm. There are a surprising number of successful musicians who are bad at these things. But the method laid out here is utterly meaningless. You might assume that practicing the violin would have some affect on these things, but it doesn't necessarily. Many people simply learn these things by wrote for specific pieces of music from their guidance in private lessons and teachers. You might also assume that someone who practices a lot and got a degree is also good at Music Theory or Music History, but that's also false. There are tons of professional classical musicians with graduate and Doctorate degrees who are bad at all the things measured in this study as well as history and theory. I'm really shocked that the authors couldn't figure out that they were measuring two completely different things and calling them the same thing. It almost seems intentional for the sake of publishing a controversial result. People absolutely get better at these specific tasks when they practice _these specific tasks_. Every music curriculum in world specifically requires classes in these exact tasks, although the bar for minimal competence is extremely low. I run a small side business tutoring people who are already professional classical musicians who want to get into a DMA program. They have to demonstrate competency at these tasks, as well as some basic knowledge of Theory and History. They can't; even though they are top-level performers on their instrument and practice hours every day. I offer a 12-week crash course that covers these types of tasks and as well as the knowledge component, and people usually find me because they've already applied to a DMA program and been rejected for failing these prerequisites. I know for a fact that they get better with deliberate practice because after working with a couple of dozen clients, every single one of them gets in on the second try. Not to mention the fact that every single day, there are students in Music degrees who start off really sucking at these specific measures who get enough better at them to pass the class at the end of the semester, through very specifically designed exercises that target these abilities. This whole study is an infuriating waste of time and money, and it's an example of some really bad science that's floating around there in the world I really have a hard time believing this was accepted anywhere for publication.