General intelligence and modality-specific differences in performance: a response to Schellenberg (2008)

Abstract

Tierney et al. (2008) reported that musicians performed better on an auditory sequence memory task when compared to non-musicians, but the two groups did not differ in performance on a sequential visuo-spatial memory task. Schellenberg (2008) claims that these results can be attributed entirely to differences in IQ. This explanation, however, cannot account for the fact that the musicians' advantage was modality-specific.