This ties in to my anecdotal observation that a lot of these early and seriously instrument-playing kids seemed really bad at judging general musical aesthetics and improvisation, but at the same time really perfect at straight reproduction. By the same token, musically creative people seemed to experiment a lot, often doing a bunch of really interesting improvisations without giving it much thought.
One of my music teachers was this way, it really was something else listening to him just idly talking and playing around on the piano for entire lesson. On the other hand, he was really bad at identifying individual notes but he could re-play a melody that he heard just once without any problems, immediately going off on several tangents and experimenting on it in different keys.
On a personal note, that was the point where I recognized that I was in neither of these categories. I switched my art class to painting after a while and stayed there ;)