Adding emotion to the gifted musical mind : Towards a model of gifted musical thinking

Much research has explored cognitive functions and the nature of information processing since the cognitive revolution began with the advent of computers. With the establishing of music psychology attention was directed also to the cognition and processing of music. However, the initial reluctance of Science to avoid the study of emotions became a problem especially in studying music as a cultural phenomenon, with the inherent ability to trigger strong affective responses. For future research into music behavior to arrive at a more complete understanding of musical giftedness and what separates general music information processing from gifted music information processing, a heuristic model of gifted musical thinking, including affective behavior, bringing domain constituents together, is much needed. This is therefore the objective of this article, namely to review relevant research and in so doing propose a differentiated model of gifted musical thinking by outlining cognitive function and bringing the most probable constituents of such musical thinking together, drawing from Persson’s (2009) multidimensional model of musical giftedness, which adds the significance of affective responses and emotive skills to the construct of musical giftedness.