I found this a fascinating article, but felt that looking at cognitive styles as a determinant in musical preferences alone the role of culture, (ethnicity, social class, group identity etc) which has a strong correlation particularly to genre choice, was completely overlooked. That means that the studies done within single genres are likely to be much more robust.

My field is classical music, and I would love to see some research within that genre of the personality types of those who like Schoenberg as opposed to Verdi, for example.

I would also like to see research not just on musical preference, but on the way people with different cognitive styles actually listen to music and what they listen to music for. My hunch is that those who are high systematisers will tend to look for patterns and find meaning in that way, whereas those with high empathy will look for the emotions that music evokes, but would be interested to see if that holds true.

Am also fascinated by the fact that people with ASC are far more likely to have absolute pitch than NT people, and I am conscious that those with AP do listen to music in different ways to those without, but that is again anecdotal and I would value some work on that.

Ian Howarth