|
| Daniel J. Levitin
Ursula Bellugi
We report new evidence for the modularity of music perception and cognition from a work in progress on the musical abilities in individuals with Williams syndrome. Williams syndrome occurs in 1 out of 20,000 births, and is associated with a specific heart defect, facial features said to be 'pixie-like' (linked to idiopathic hypercalcemia by Black & Bonham-Carter, 1963) , auditory hypersensitivity, and a deletion of one copy of a small set of genes including elastin on chromosome 7. Previous research has shown that Williams syndrome is also characterized by impaired cognitive function (mean IQ=58), poor spatial, quantitative, and reasoning abilities, coupled with excellent face processing and relatively intact language abilities in older individuals (Bellugi, Klima & Wang, 1996; Bihrle, Bellugi, Delis & Marks, 1989; Reilly, Klima & Bellugi, 1990) . Because of the dissociation between language and other aspects of cognition, WS provides a compelling argument for the modularity of language. Anecdotal evidence has suggested that many individuals with Williams syndrome also possess musical abilities. To date, however, there has been little scientific investigation of musical abilities in Williams syndrome individuals. For much of its history, experimental psychology has viewed intelligence as somewhat monolithic, and mental retardation as reflected more or less uniform impairment across domains of cognitive functioning. The study of distinct, well-defined, and atypical populations affords the investigation of specific aspects of cognition. Studies of these populations can provide evidence for the debate over the modularity of specific mental functions, and promises to contribute to a better understanding of the underlying neural architecture in cognitive processes. Bellugi is conducting a thorough and systematic study of Williams syndrome in an effort to deepen our understanding of all these issues (e.g., Bellugi et al., 1996; Karmiloff-Smith, Klima, Bellugi, Grant & Baron-Cohen, 1995). In this preliminary report, we present both qualitative (n=40) and quantitative (n=10) studies of individuals with Williams syndrome, attending in 1996 the Willliams Syndrome Music and Arts Camp at Belvoir Terrace in Lenox, Massachusetts near Tanglewood. Qualitative observations.In our qualitative "natural setting" observations at the camp, we noticed that the Williams syndrome individuals had an unusually high degree of engagement with music. Music seemed to be not just a very deep and rich part of their lives, but one that was omnipresent; most of them spent a great proportion of the day singing to themselves or playing instruments, even while walking to the mess hall. They appeared to do this with a good deal less self-consciousness than normal music camp attendees, or normal individuals. When one camper encountered another camper or group of campers involved in a musical activity, no matter how informal, the newcomer would either join in immediately or begin swaying appreciatively in time to the music. We feel the need to emphasize our observation that this consuming involvement with music is unusual in normal populations; one of us (DJL) spent a number of years working as a professional musician and rarely encountered this type of total immersion among musicians - in fact, the type of connectedness to music the Williams syndrome individuals naturally displayed is often considered a goal among many musicians. All the more striking was the Williams syndrome individuals' inability to carry out tasks requiring low level hand-eye coordination or visual-spatial skills. For example, many subjects had difficulty walking, and handled eating utensils with an uncomfortable awkwardness. Yet, when presented with the musical instrument on which they specialize -- be it a clarinet, piano, drum set, or guitar -- they are able to execute musical passages requiring a much finer degree of control and coordination than that required to successfully walk a flight of stairs or cut their food. There is a decided lack of technical perfection in all these musical performances, but this is more than compensated for by the subjective quality of "soul" they inject into their performances. One participant was a prolific songwriter. To examine his ability, the experimenter asked him to write a song about a breakfast cereal, specifically "Kellogg's Rice Krispies," a topic which was a complete non-sequitur during the experimental session. To E's surprise, he spontaneously composed a song about Rice Krispies, complete with verse, chorus, and rhyming lyrics. Without further observations, it is not clear how much this apparently new composition differed from others that he has written, but a quick review of some of his repertoire revealed both a distinct compositional style, and a marked difference among the various tunes. In a previous study, one of us (UB) demonstrated that Williams syndrome individuals make extensive use of paralinguistic channels (Reilly et al., 1990) while telling stories from a wordless picture book. Specifically, Williams syndrome individuals used affective prosody and lexically encoded narrative enrichment devices, including many that are specifically listener-oriented as well as being affective. This places Williams syndrome individuals on the end of a continuum of social cognition anchored at the deficit end by autistic individuals. The parents we interviewed all reported that their children have an intense connection to music away from camp as well. Many parents reported that their children knew hundreds, if not thousands, of songs from popular music records; although this is not unusual among "normal" American teen-agers, it is worth noting as a contrast to the Williams syndrome individuals' deficits in other cognitive domains. Several parents reported that their children seemed to have unusual abilities in sound identification. One child could reportedly distinguish among a dozen different brands and models of vacuum cleaners based exclusively on the sound of their motors; another child could reportedly identify dozens of cars as they rounded the corner outside of his house based solely on the sound of the engine. These claims have not yet been tested, but suggest that a skill akin to "absolute timbre" may exist in these individuals. Quantitative Observations.Our quantitative measure took the form of rhythmic tests conducted on Williams syndrome subjects (8 - 24 years old). The experimenter presented each subject with a series of increasingly complex rhythms, clapped on the hands, and asked the subjects to repeat them. The dependent variable was their percent correct score. Without being explicitly told to do so, the subjects very naturally began to clap back the demonstrations in perfect time, without missing a beat. That is, the subjects interpreted the examples as forming part of a larger musical set; the subjects seemed to assume that there was an implied time signature and tempo, and they responded to the "first measure" of music played by the experimenter in time for the downbeat (or in some cases pickups) to the "second measure." Moreover, the subjects revealed a remarkable ability to track changes in rhythmic pulse, including changes to swing time, straight eighths, triplets, sixteenths, syncopations, and so on. In roughly 2/3 of the cases, the subjects played back the rhythms correctly (regardless of difficulty). They were wrong on roughly 1/3 of the trials, although their incorrect responses were not necessarily to the more difficult rhythms, raising the possibility that lack of attentional control was responsible for their errors, rather than the rhythmic complexity of the example presented. The most interesting observation was that in roughly 1/2 of those cases in which the Williams syndrome subject clapped an incorrect rhythm, the subject altered the original rhythm in a fashion that could best be described as good "rhythmic completions." In other words, the pattern they played back on these occasions could be considered part of a "call-and-response" rhythm pair, such as are shared by jazz musicians "trading one bar phrases." To put it another way, the subjects seemed to be making music out of their response, rather than slavishly mimicking the experimenter. Two independent data coders who knew nothing about these data or this hypothesis, and themselves professional musicians, confirmed this good "rhythmic completion" effect. We used a set of mental age and sex-matched control subjects, aged 5 -7, recruited from the Palo Alto community, and all of whom were actively involved in music and music lessons. The control subjects did not score significantly different from the Williams syndrome subjects on the rhythm tests, although their productions were characterized by a lack of the "rhythmic completion" effect. Conclusions.We have described evidence for the modularity of musical ability in individuals with Williams syndrome. Despite substantial impairments in virtually every cognitive domain, Williams syndrome individuals maintain relatively intact language and music abilities. We saw no individuals who had intact musical abilities but impaired language function, supporting the conjectures of previous researchers that language and music may have evolved from, and involve, common subsystems. References.Bellugi, U., Klima, E. S., & Wang, P. P. (1996). Cognitive and neural development: Clues from genetically based syndromes. In D. Magnussen (Ed.), The life-span development of individuals: Behavioral, neurobiological, and psychosocial perspectives, (pp. 223-243). New York: Cambridge University Press. Bihrle, A. M., Bellugi, U., Delis, D., & Marks, S. (1989). Seeing either the forest or the trees: Dissociation in visuospatial processing. Brain and Cognition, 11, 37-49. Black, J. A., & Bonham-Carter, R. E. (1963). Association between aortic stenosis and facies of severe infantile hypercalcemia. Lancet, 11, 745-749. Karmiloff-Smith, A., Klima, E. S., Bellugi, U., Grant, J., & Baron-Cohen, S. (1995). Is there a social module? Language, face processing, and theory of mind in subjects with Williams syndrome. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 7(2), 196-208. Reilly, J., Klima, E. S., & Bellugi, U. (1990). Once more with feeling:Affect and language in atypical populations. Development and Psychopathology. 2, 367-391. |
|
 View
Our Guestbook
Please send mail to williamssyndrome@insightbb.com with questions or comments about this web site.For additional information about Williams syndrome, please send an e-mail to hlenhoff@uci.edu.For contact with other Williams syndrome families --In the USA: please send e-mail to info@williams-syndrome.orgOutside the USA:
please visit our
International Williams Syndrome Support Groups page for
contact information.
|
