Laterality for Music Problem Solving Among Adolescents Gifted in Music, Mathematics and Dance

The ways in which sensory information, music in particular, is managem by the mental processing system of differentially gifted students were studied. A total of 138 right-handed adolescents and young adults (aged 14 to 22 years), who were gifted in music, mathematics, or dance, were tested on two tasks of music and one task of speech perception. Focus was on studying the comparative nature of laterality patterns for music and speech perception among heterogeneously talented students. Also studied were the responses of the cerebral hemispheres to sensory stimuli and the role talent training might play in shaping ear asymmetry. Ear asymmetry for the musically gifted students seemed largely task dependent. The mathematics students possessed procedural knowledge without task content mastery, a finding that is consistent with learning taxonomies that position the skill of knowledge hierarchically before that of analysis. Results also suggest that, although each hemisphere appeared to prefer processing in differentiated form ("parts" for the left and "wholes" for the right), the two hemispheres functioned in collaboration. These findings emphasize the usefulness of initiating research combining neuroscientific and educational parameters. (SLD) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.