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Musicality: instinct or acquired skill?
1Department of Psychology, New York University, NY 10003, USA. gary.marcus@nyu.edu
Topics in Cognitive Science
|September 11, 2012
Abstract:
Is the human tendency toward musicality better thought of as the product of a specific, evolved instinct or an acquired skill? Developmental and evolutionary arguments are considered, along with issues of domain-specificity. The article also considers the question of why humans might be consistently and intensely drawn to music if musicality is not in fact the product of a specifically evolved instinct.