Abstract
Bentley's Measures of Musical Abilities (MMA) (1966), is currently used to assess the "musical ability" of some British schoolchildren. Hence, it is relevant to consider some discrepancies which are found when statistics derived from the Bentley Pitch Discrimination (BPD) responses of 311 contemporary schoolchildren are compared with statistics given in the MMA test manual. These discrepancies appear to result, at least partially, from inaccuracies in the frequencies of some of the recorded BPD tones which differ from their item specifications, waver in pitch, and probably vary from record to record. When the test responses of 640 schoolchildren to a re-recorded version of BPD (Test A) are considered, these discrepancies appear to be eliminated. However, the extent to which the mean score of Test A exceeds that of BPD implies that the capacity of Test A to discriminate between high scorers will be inadequate. Hence, the case for developing, and publishing, a new test of "musical ability" is argued.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.