| 1. |
- Theorell, Töres, et al.
(författare)
-
Predictors of continued playing or singing - from childhood and adolescence to adult years
- 2015
-
Ingår i: Acta Paediatrica. - : Wiley. - 0803-5253 .- 1651-2227. ; 104:3, s. 274-284
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Aim: Many individuals play an instrument or sing during childhood, but they often stop later in life. This study surveyed adults representative of the Swedish population about musical activities during childhood.Methods: We asked 3820 adults (65% women) aged from 27 to 54 from the Swedish Twin Registry, who took extra music lessons to those provided at school, to fill in a web-based questionnaire. Factors analysed were the age they started studying music, the instrument they played, kind of teaching, institution and educational content, number of lessons and perceived characteristics of the lessons, the music environment during their childhood years and their preferred music genre. All variables were dichotomised.Results: Factors strongly associated with continued playing or singing were male sex, young starting age, cultural family background, self-selected instrument, attending music classes and more than once a week, church-related or private education, pop, rock or classical music, playing by ear and improvisation.Conclusion: Several significant predictors determined whether a child continued to sing or play an instrument as an adult and many could be externally influenced, such as starting at a young age, taking music classes more than once a week, improvisation and the type of music they played.
|
|
| 2. |
|
|
| 3. |
|
|
| 4. |
- Madison, Guy, et al.
(författare)
-
Common genetic influences on intelligence and auditory simple reaction time in a large Swedish sample
- 2016
-
Ingår i: Intelligence. - : Elsevier. - 0160-2896 .- 1873-7935. ; 59, s. 157-162
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Intelligence and cognitive ability have long been associated with chronometric performance measures, such as reaction time (RT), but few studies have investigated auditory RT in this context. The nature of this relationship is important for understanding the etiology and structure of intelligence. Here, we present a bivariate twin analysis of simple auditory RT and psychometric intelligence (measured by the Wiener Matrizen Test). The sample consisted of 1,816 complete twin pairs and 4623 singletons enrolled in the Swedish Twin Registry, who performed the tests online. The heritabilities were 0.54 and 0.21 for intelligence and RT, respectively, and the phenotypic correlation was −0.17, 47% of which was explained by common genetic variance. These results are comparable to those found for visual RT and for other cognitive tests, and add RT in the auditory modality to the small literature on common genetic influences across intelligence and other cognitive and chronometric variables.
|
|
| 5. |
- Mosing, Miriam A, et al.
(författare)
-
Genetic and environmental influences on the relationship between flow proneness, locus of control and behavioral inhibition
- 2012
-
Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - : Public library of science. - 1932-6203. ; 7:11, s. e47958-
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Flow is a psychological state of high but subjectively effortless attention that typically occurs during active performance of challenging tasks and is accompanied by a sense of automaticity, high control, low self-awareness, and enjoyment. Flow proneness is associated with traits and behaviors related to low neuroticism such as emotional stability, conscientiousness, active coping, self-esteem and life satisfaction. Little is known about the genetic architecture of flow proneness, behavioral inhibition and locus of control - traits also associated with neuroticism - and their interrelation. Here, we hypothesized that individuals low in behavioral inhibition and with an internal locus of control would be more likely to experience flow and explored the genetic and environmental architecture of the relationship between the three variables. Behavioral inhibition and locus of control was measured in a large population sample of 3,375 full twin pairs and 4,527 single twins, about 26% of whom also scored the flow proneness questionnaire. Findings revealed significant but relatively low correlations between the three traits and moderate heritability estimates of .41, .45, and .30 for flow proneness, behavioral inhibition, and locus of control, respectively, with some indication of non-additive genetic influences. For behavioral inhibition we found significant sex differences in heritability, with females showing a higher estimate including significant non-additive genetic influences, while in males the entire heritability was due to additive genetic variance. We also found a mainly genetically mediated relationship between the three traits, suggesting that individuals who are genetically predisposed to experience flow, show less behavioral inhibition (less anxious) and feel that they are in control of their own destiny (internal locus of control). We discuss that some of the genes underlying this relationship may include those influencing the function of dopaminergic neural systems.
|
|
| 6. |
- Mosing, Miriam A., et al.
(författare)
-
Genetic pleiotropy explains associations between musical auditory discrimination and intelligence
- 2014
-
Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 9:11
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Musical aptitude is commonly measured using tasks that involve discrimination of different types of musical auditory stimuli. Performance on such different discrimination tasks correlates positively with each other and with intelligence. However, no study to date has explored these associations using a genetically informative sample to estimate underlying genetic and environmental influences. In the present study, a large sample of Swedish twins (N=10,500) was used to investigate the genetic architecture of the associations between intelligence and performance on three musical auditory discrimination tasks (rhythm, melody and pitch). Phenotypic correlations between the tasks ranged between 0.23 and 0.42 (Pearson r values). Genetic modelling showed that the covariation between the variables could be explained by shared genetic influences. Neither shared, nor non-shared environment had a significant effect on the associations. Good fit was obtained with a two-factor model where one underlying shared genetic factor explained all the covariation between the musical discrimination tasks and IQ, and a second genetic factor explained variance exclusively shared among the discrimination tasks. The results suggest that positive correlations among musical aptitudes result from both genes with broad effects on cognition, and genes with potentially more specific influences on auditory functions.
|
|
| 7. |
- Mosing, Miriam A., et al.
(författare)
-
Heritability of proneness for psychological flow experiences
- 2012
-
Ingår i: Personality and Individual Differences. - : PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD. - 0191-8869 .- 1873-3549. ; 53:5, s. 699-704
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Flow is a subjective experience of high but effortless attention, loss of self-awareness, control, and enjoyment that can occur during active performance of challenging tasks. Proneness to experience flow is associated with personality, specifically with low neuroticism and high conscientiousness. We investigated genetic and non-genetic influences on flow proneness in 444 adult twin pairs. Data were collected using an on-line administration of the Swedish Flow Proneness Questionnaire, which includes separate scales for flow proneness in three major domains of life: work, maintenance, and leisure. We found moderate (.29-.35) heritabilities for the flow scales. Twin correlations as well as multivariate modeling suggested non-additive genetic influences. Genetic influences were almost entirely shared for the three flow scales and genetic correlations between the scales were very high (.81-.97), suggesting that the same genes influence flow proneness independently of domain. Non-shared environmental influences, in contrast, were largely specific to each flow scale. We conclude that an individual's general proneness to experience flow is influenced by the same genetic factors regardless of domain, and these may be associated with personality traits that are conducive to flow. In addition, specific environmental factors appear to be of importance for within-individual differences in flow proneness in different domains. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
|
|
| 8. |
- Mosing, Miriam A, et al.
(författare)
-
Investigating cognitive transfer within the framework of music practice : genetic pleiotropy rather than causality
- 2016
-
Ingår i: Developmental Science. - : Wiley-Blackwell. - 1363-755X .- 1467-7687. ; 19:3, s. 504-512
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The idea of far transfer effects in the cognitive sciences has received much attention in recent years. One domain where far transfer effects have frequently been reported is music education, with the prevailing idea that music practice entails an increase in cognitive ability (IQ). While cross-sectional studies consistently find significant associations between music practice and IQ, randomized controlled trials, however, report mixed results. An alternative to the hypothesis of cognitive transfer effects is that some underlying factors, such as shared genes, influence practice behaviour and IQ causing associations on the phenotypic level. Here we explored the hypothesis of far transfer within the framework of music practice. A co-twin control design combined with classical twin-modelling based on a sample of more than 10,500 twins was used to explore causal associations between music practice and IQ as well as underlying genetic and environmental influences. As expected, phenotypic associations were moderate (r = 0.11 and r = 0.10 for males and females, respectively). However, the relationship disappeared when controlling for genetic and shared environmental influences using the co-twin control method, indicating that a highly practiced twin did not have higher IQ than the untrained co-twin. In line with that finding, the relationship between practice and IQ was mostly due to shared genetic influences. Findings strongly suggest that associations between music practice and IQ in the general population are non-causal in nature. The implications of the present findings for research on plasticity, modularity, and transfer are discussed.
|
|
| 9. |
- Mosing, Miriam A., et al.
(författare)
-
The genetic architecture of correlations between perceptual timing, motor timing, and intelligence
- 2016
-
Ingår i: Intelligence. - : Elsevier BV. - 0160-2896 .- 1873-7935. ; 57, s. 33-40
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Psychometric intelligence correlates with performance on a wide range of sensory and motor tasks that involve processing of temporal information in the millisecond-second range. For some timing tasks, e.g. reaction time and discrimination of temporal stimuli in working memory, the associations with intelligence are likely to involve top-down mechanisms such as attention. However, studies on repetitive, automatic motor timing tasks indicate that correlations between intelligence and timing also may reflect bottom-up mechanisms, i.e. basic neural properties that influence both the temporal accuracy of behavior and cognitive processes. Here, we study the genetic architecture of the associations between intelligence, perceptual timing (auditory rhythm discrimination) and motor timing (finger tapping) in a large twin cohort. Specifically, we hypothesized that the associations between these tasks on the phenotypic level involve broad pleiotropic genetic effects that influence all three tasks, as well as additional genetic effects on the covariation between perceptual and motor timing. Phenotypic associations between the variables were low to moderate, with Pearson's correlations in the range 0.17-0.32. Trivariate twin modeling showed that the associations between the three variables were essentially due to shared genetic influences. In support of the hypotheses, we found evidence for pleiotropic effects on motor timing, perceptual timing, and intelligence, as well as additional genetic covariation between the two timing tasks that was not shared with intelligence. We conclude, first, that genetic factors underlying intelligence may involve genes which influence brain properties of importance for the temporal accuracy of neural processing. We discuss possible neural substrates of such effects. Secondly, the correlation between motor and perceptual timing also partly explained by genetic influences that are unrelated to intelligence.
|
|
| 10. |
- Theorell, Töres P., et al.
(författare)
-
Musical activity and emotional competence - a twin study
- 2014
-
Ingår i: Frontiers in Psychology. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 1664-1078. ; 5, s. 774-
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The hypothesis was tested that musical activities may contribute to the prevention of alexithymia. We tested whether musical creative achievement and musical practice are associated with lower alexithymia. 8000 Swedish twins aged 27-54 were studied. Alexithymia was assessed using the Toronto Alexithymia Scale-20. Musical achievement was rated on a 7-graded scale. Participants estimated number of hours of music practice during different ages throughout life. A total life estimation of number of accumulated hours was made. They were also asked about ensemble playing. In addition, twin modelling was used to explore the genetic architecture of the relation between musical practice and alexithymia. Alexithymia was negatively associated with (i) musical creative achievement, (ii) having played a musical instrument as compared to never having played, and for the subsample of participants that had played an instrument (iii) total hours of musical training (r = 0.12 in men and 0.10 in women). Ensemble playing added significant variance. Twin modelling showed that alexithymia had a moderate heritability of 36% and that the association with musical practice could be explained by shared genetic influences. Associations between musical training and alexithymia remained significant when controlling for education, depression, and intelligence. Musical achievement and musical practice are associated with lower levels of alexithymia in both men and women. Musical engagement thus appears to be associated with higher emotional competence, although effect sizes are small. The association between musical training and alexithymia appears to be entirely genetically mediated, suggesting genetic pleiotropy.
|
|
