Carl Emil Seashore, born Sjöstrand (January 28, 1866 – October 16, 1949) was a prominent American psychologist and educator. He was the author of numerous books and articles principally regarding the fields of speech–language pathology, music education, and the psychology of music and art. He served as Dean of the Graduate College of University of Iowa from 1908–1937. He is most commonly associated with the development of the Seashore Tests of Musical Ability.Milton Merfessel (30 June 1950) Memorial: Carl Emil Seashore, 1866-1949 (Science: Vol. 111 no. 2896 pp. 713-717)
Background Seashore was born in Mörlunda, Hultsfred Municipality, Kalmar County, Sweden, to Carl Gustav and Emily Sjöstrand. He emigrated with his family to the United States in 1870 at the age of 3 due to both economic and religious considerations and settled in Rockford, Iowa, before moving and settling in a farming community located in Boone County, Iowa. The name "Seashore" is a translation of the Swedish surname Sjöstrand. Seashore had two sisters and two brothers who were all educated in Swedish. His father, Carl Gustav Seashore, was a lay preacher and built a church, where Seashore began serving as the church organist at the age of 14.
He graduated from Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, in 1891, having studied mathematics, music, classical languages and literature. Music was considered the "most important extracurricular activity in college" and he enjoyed singing at all sorts of collegiate occasions. During his years in college he served as the organist and choir director of a local Swedish-American Lutheran church and his salary there paid most of his college expenses. Seashore became a member of the Iowa Beta chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon.Dr. Seashore Ranked as One of Top Alumni (Dr. John S. Kendall, Professor of Psychology and President of Gustavus Adolphus College)
Seashore attended Yale University when it had just opened the Graduate Department of Philosophy and Psychology. He studied under George Trumbull Ladd, professor of metaphysics and moral philosophy, and Edward Wheeler Scripture, an experimental psychologist who conducted research on phonetics. In 1877, Ladd had authored the standard American textbook Elements of Physiological Psychology. In 1895, Seashore was awarded the school's first Ph. D in psychology for his dissertation on the role of inhibition in learning.
After receiving his Ph.D. degree from Yale, Seashore spent the summer in Europe to visit different German and French psychology laboratories before returning to Yale University as a Fellow in Psychology and an assistant to Ladd. In 1897, he was offered a permanent position at Yale. Additionally, he was also offered an opportunity to go to China as a missionary teacher. However, he decided to return to his home state and spent the next fifty years as a researcher and an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Iowa. In 1908, Seashore was made Dean of the Graduate School at University of Iowa, where he maintained the position for nearly 30 years. He became president of the American Psychological Association in 1911 and presided over the 20th meeting in Washington, D.C.
Career In 1905, Seashore was made chairman of the Philosophy and Psychology Department and in 1908, he was made Dean of the Graduate School. He served for 40 years as Professor of Psychology and Chair of the Department of Psychology. He also served as Chairman of the Division of Anthropology and Psychology from 1933–1939.
He helped found the Iowa Psychological Clinic in 1908 and later became president of the American Psychological Association in 1911. He went on to establish the Psychopathic Hospital at the University of Iowa, the Iowa Institute for Mental Hygiene, and the Gifted Student Project in 1915.
Seashore was interested in audiology, the psychology of music, the psychology of speech and stuttering, the psychology of the graphic arts and measuring motivation and scholastic aptitude. In particular, he was interested in the three perspectives of the psychology of music: the psychology of individual talent, the psychology of aesthetic feeling in musical appreciation and expression, and the psychology of the pedagogy of music.Carl E. Seashore (May, 1915) The Measurement of Musical Talent (The Musical Quarterly Vol. 1, No. 1 pp. 129-148) Seashore used standardized tests to objectively measure an individual's ability to perceive different dimensions of music and how musical aptitude differed between students. He devised the Seashore Tests of Musical Ability in 1919, a version of which is still used in schools in the United States. The test involved controlled procedures for measuring respondent's ability to discriminate pitch, loudness, tempo, timbre, and rhythm.James L. Mursell (May, 1931) An Evaluation of the Seashore Tests (Music Supervisors' Journal Vol. 17, No. 5 pp. 62,64-65)
His interests in the fine arts led to a joint effort with Dr. Norman Charles Meier (1893-1967) and the publication of the Meier-Seashore Art Judgment Test in 1929. During the early 1930s, he received financial support for his research from the Bell Laboratories. Among the larger projects that he supervised was one at the Eastman School of Music with financial assistance from George Eastman. His complete publication list from 1893 to 1949 includes 237 books and articles.Carl E. Seashore (April 5, 1929) Art Judgment: A Measure Related to Both Personality and Intelligence? (Science: Vol. 69 no. 1788 p. 380)
Given his interests in music and the arts, Seashore established some of the first graduate programs in the nation in the creative arts, especially music, theater, and the literary arts, where a student could obtain a doctorate with an artistic creation. He strived to incorporate experimental psychology and the scientific method into the fields of art and related subjects.
During his time at the University of Iowa, Seashore dedicated his career to education and research on the qualities of music perception and aesthetic talent. There, he also mentored several students that eventually became prominent psychological figures, such as Walter Richard Miles, Francis P. Robinson, Lee Edward Travis, and Joseph Harold Tiffin.
The Use of Vibrato in Music Seashore dedicated some of his musical focus on understanding the perception of vibrato, or the pulsation of pitch, in music and its effects on the richness and vibrance of tone. He spent considerable time to measure, record, and define the function of vibrato in music. He described vibrato as "a basic phenomenon of nature" to provide the tone with richness and emotion. Seashore proposed using devices and measuring instruments to record musical patterns and analyze the frequency, pulsation, and occurrence of vibrato in music.
Seashore Tests of Musical Ability Seashore was influenced by the scientific work of James McKeen Cattell, a prominent psychologist and the founding editor of the American Journal of Psychology, and wanted to apply the methods of scientific psychology and mental testing to his research interest on musical aptitude and sensory perception differences in individuals. He insisted that "musical talent is subject to scientific analysis and can be measured." To perform such measurements, Seashore and his colleagues constructed various devices, including an audiometer, to measure auditory acuity. He went on to devise a set of measures in 1919 that involved controlled procedures for measuring a respondent's ability to discriminate pitch, loudness, tempo, timbre, and rhythm.Jere T. Humphreys (June, 1998) Musical Aptitude Testing: From James McKeen Cattell to Carl Emil Seashore (Research Studies in Music Education p. 42-53) Seashore incorporated complex machinery, systems of pulleys to generate reproducible pitches, and a special set of tuning forks to test pitch discrimination, dissonance, rhythm, melodic memory, and music intensity. Cary, H. (December 1923) Are You a Musician? Professor Seashore's Specific Psychological Tests for Specific Musical Abilities. (Scientific American, p. 326-237)
Seashore proposed that musical talent cannot be defined as a single construct, but is a product of an accumulation, or a hierarchy, of different musical traits. In order to classify the true nature of an individual's musical talent, a quantitative and qualitative analysis must be conducted on the individual's hierarchy of musical traits. He speculated that if an individual demonstrated difficulties in making comparison judgments between tonal pairs, the individual would probably not be capable of becoming a first-class musician as a performer, nor is he or she likely to find music as a source of pleasure as many others find it.Walter R. Miles (1956) Carl Emil Seashore: 1866-1949 (Washington, D.C., National Academy of Sciences) Seashore also proposed that the appreciation and expression of music may be divided into four fundamental capacities: sensory (ability to hear music), motor (the ability to express music), associational (the ability to understand music), and affective (the ability to feel music and express feelings). With the four capacities of music, Seashore devised a battery that tested an individual's ability to process and understand music while also assessing musical traits such as absolute pitch, pitch discrimination, and tone deafness.
While creating the different tests of musical talents, he made sure that the tests were:Carl E. Seashore (1919) Manual of Instructions and Interpretations for Measures of Musical Talent (New York: Columbia Graphophone Company) Based on thorough analysis of musical talent Standardized for content that does not need to be changed Give quantitative results which may be verified Simple and nearly self-operating Adapted for group measurements Take into account practice, training, age, and intelligence
The test material were contained on five double-disk records that worked on any standard phonograph. Seashore recommended that the test should first be administered to children in the fifth grade and again in the eighth grade before children enter into elective courses in high school. The core subtests of the musical battery were created to assess five basic capacities of the musical mind: Sense of pitch: Hearing two tones and determining which one is higher. Sense of intensity: Hearing two tones of different loudness and determining which one is stronger. Sense of time: Hearing three clicks marking two intervals of time and determining which interval is longer. Sense of consonance: Hearing two combinations of two tones and determining which one sounds better (harmony). Tonal memory: Hearing a series of tones twice with the second playing having an adjusted note and identifying which note was changed. Additional subtests were incorporated to measure other features of musical perception, including timbre, rhythm, musical memory, and emotional reactions and self-expressions in music. Teachers would also add qualitative information through ratings of brightness (estimate of the natural ability to do the work that the school requires under favorable conditions), singing (ability to sing as shown in public school music), and rhythmic action (child's ability to march, to skip, to dance, or take part in games requiring motor coordination).Carl E. Seashore (1924) A Survey of Musical Talent in the Public Schools (University of Iowa Studies: Studies in Child Welfare, Vol. 1, no. 2, p. 7-36)
Given the results of the battery, Seashore created a Talent Chart based on norms and percentile rank values for children in the fifth grade and eighth grade as well as adults. Each test would be normed and given a percentage value; the results would then be shown in a single graph or curve and would help convey an immediate representation of the features of musical traits or capacities of a specific individual.