Musical aptitudes, musical interests and mental retardation

A modified version of the Bentley scales of musical aptitude was given to a sample of mild and moderately retarded adults chosen on the basis of alleged musical interest or experience. Several comparison groups were also given the assessment battery. The musical nominees generally performed more accurately than both matched retarded subjects with no particular musical interests and a group of normal children matched on (Wechsler) vocabulary scores. The musical nominees showed especially high performance on the subtest assessing voice analysis in chords.