Addressing Formal Instruction in Music and Language Research

There is a debate on whether music and language share common neural basis. In legal terms, the field is in the discovery phase. Experiments are being run, and the data is being collected. My intuition says the final story will be nuanced, it will be a matter of degree and definitions. I am motivated to contribute to the current conversation.

In order to have a productive conversation, there needs to be guidelines for fairness and civility. One of my conversational guidelines is reciprocity; whatever the standard, it should apply to all sides.

Music and language should be judged by the same standard. That is not frequently the case in the literature. For example in Functional Anatomy of Language and Music Perception: Temporal and Structural Factors Investigated Using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging by Corianne Rogalsky, Feng Rong, Kourosh Saberi, and Gregory Hickok, participants self-reported formal music education but not formal language instruction.

Almost everyone is an expert in their native language and music. That expertise is implicit for both. Most people receive formal, explicit language training. Some people receive formal, explicit musical training. The scientific literature should treat formal instruction as an equally confounding variable for both language and music.