Chapter 6 – Development of musical perception
(by Damian Llopis)

 

 

” WITHOUT MUSIC, LIFE WOULD BE A MISTAKE”

Friedrich  Nietzsche.

 

Music is defined as the artful sound of human voice, instruments, or both, taking into account melody, harmony and rhythm. Music, like language, is a form of communication based on acoustics. It follows certain rules to combine a limited number of sounds in an infinite number of forms. For both skills there is a genetic predisposition that enables subjects to acquire language and recognize musical variations from a very early age. During the first year of life, a baby exposed to sounds develops musical and verbal or linguistic perception abilities.

 

In music, as well as in language, common discrimination factors serve as starting point. Among these factors you may find tone and intensity. Children in the pre-lingual phase have a musical perception ability similar to that of older children. From 6 months of age onwards you can assess the ability to detect changes in melodies. This musical perception has an influence on personal relationship aspects. All mothers sing melodies to their babies, even though they cannot understand what is being said and, generally, a special, simple and acute, slow and emotionally expressive tone is used. It is common to all cultures.

 

Such behavior on the side of the mothers generates a decrease in motor activity and long periods of focused attention in children.  Music, just like language, has been studied by neuroscientists, musicians and therapists. Both types of sound stimuli share sensory aferences that transfer information to the cerebral cortex.

 

Language is made up of phoneme, morpheme, words and sentences. Music is made up of tone, timbre, rhythm and melody. Together, they produce musical perception. Besides, music and language relate to image creation (memories and memory), motor activity and affectivity.

 

Analyzing central processing of language has advanced greatly, whereas music analysis is more complex, since you need to isolate its various characteristics. Results from experimental studies related to musical processing are affected by the subject’s musical experience (musicians, non musicians or amateurs) and by the way elements of musical stimuli are presented. While one may be competent without training language-wise as far as comprehension and verbal expression go, and musical perception ability and melody recognition may be acquired spontaneously, playing an instrument must be learnt. In order to fulfill with the requirements of a harmonious production, there must be training.

 

Music plays a very important role in the learning process of a child in nursery school. It is essential that from the very first contact with music, a child feels and perceives that he/she is producing it. A child must be appealed by music so that he/she learns to listen to it, to know it and respect it. Musical activities are very beneficial: Listening ability as well as concentration increase, imagination is developed, creativity is encouraged, and so on.

 

☑ WHAT TO EXPECT FROM MUSIC IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT

 

• IMPROVE ABSTRACTING ABILITIES.

 

• PSYCHOMOTOR RESPONSE.

 

• MEDIUM AND IMMEDIATE MEMORY.

 

• ORAL EXPRESSION OF COMPLEX FEELINGS AND CONCEPTS.

 

• CLEAR TREND TOWARDS SOCIAL INTEGRATION.

 

 

6.1 Musical transmission in the mother-baby relationship

Experimental psychology findings bring us interesting data on the benefits of rocking a baby and the efficiency of carrying the baby in their arms to sooth him/her. Korner (1965, 1970) considers vestibular stimuli produced by a change in position to have a soothing effect on the baby, even more so than mere skin contact. The very same stimuli, when brief and predominantly vertical, activate the baby’s visual sweep and attention capacity. Clark (1977) showed that vestibular stimuli have a positive effect on the child’s motor development.

Several authors indicate how important rhythm is in mother-baby interactions. Their work shows how repetitions through time as well as a regular mother-baby interaction schedule favor cognitive acquisition in the baby. Through what is known (rhythm), the mother prepares the baby to accept the unknown (changes in stimuli).

Other authors showed the effect rhyme and repetition provoked on the psyche. The pleasure given by rhymes in songs compensates for the detachment and separation feeling brought by sleep.

 

It is known that the mother-baby relationship is determined by an early diagnosis of hearing loss. Therefore, it is essential that early attention programs reinforce the importance of maintaining these behaviors to establish the first contact with music, in the form of rhymes, songs and lullabies that are so beneficial for babies.

 

Distressed mothers express that they must remove the baby’s hearing aid or cochlear implant to sleep. Because of this, the baby can no longer listen to them, so “what is the point of singing to a deaf baby”. First, it is not a must to remove the baby’s hearing aid or CI when he/she is falling asleep. Even if you do remove them, the baby benefits from the mother´s facial expression, the tenderness of the moment and vestibular stimuli from rocking and so on.

 

6.2 Psychology of musical development

Several authors have proved and described different evolution phases to acquiring different musical parameters. They have proposed development steps for musical skills depending on a child’s response to different perception and creative and leisure production situations of sounds considered music.

 

Development milestones in musical ability from 0 to 6 years of age Shuter-Dyson and Gabriel (1981)

 

Ages
0-1	Reacts to sounds.
1-2	Makes music spontaneously.
2-3	Starts reproducing sentences of songs heard before.
3-4	Conceives a melody’s general plan. He/She could develop a comprehensive ear should he/she learn how to play an instrument.
4-5	Can discriminate pitch registers, can reproduce, through imitation, simple rhythms.
5-6	Understands loud/low, can tell apart “same” and “different” when talking about melody outlines or simple rhythms.

 

Characteristics of evolution and musical development in a child (0-3 years old)

 

8 months	The baby responds to music and to any other acoustic stimulus by changing positions and his/her regular resting position.
18 months	The baby reacts to music rhythmically with his/her entire body.Hums or spontaneously sings syllables. Imitates songs he/she listens to, humming out of tune.
2 years	He/She mostly sings, uses percussion and moves.Discovery of rhythm (generally, the brain “discovers” the body; walking, dancing, sense of physical rhythm). Interest in instruments. Encouraged to sing.
2 and a half years	Tells music and noise apart.He/She is familiar with songs and easy lyrics.

 

 

6.3 Music and Cochlear Implant

(from Music and Cochlear Implants. Professional series Cochlear Ltd.2008)

 

Up-to-date, little research has been undertaken on musical perception abilities of children with CI. Tara Vongpaisal, PhD student at the University of Toronto in Canada, has carried out a study series on music. The population was 10 implanted children and a control group of 10 children with regular hearing levels. The study consisted of recognizing some pop songs under three different forms: The original recording, the recording without the lyrics (karaoke style) and the melody on the piano. Children with regular hearing and children with CI obtained similar results when listening to the original version. However, without the lyrics, children with CI performed less well. Their performance decreased even more when they were asked to identify the melody on the piano, whereas children with regular hearing maintained a good performance.

In a second study, the children’s ability to differentiate the tone of some sequential sounds was measured. In a monotonous sequence, children with CI can differentiate a change in tone between one and two semi-tones. Their performance was worse than that of the children in the control group when they were given tones sequentially different and were asked to determine whether two sequences were the same or not. In this context, children with CI had trouble detecting changes of one semi-tone.

 

Another study consisted of repeating the lyrics of familiar melodies with or without musical accompaniment. Children with CI repeat 19% of words correctly, as opposed to 90% of children with regular hearing in the control group.

 

The last study assessed whether children with congenital hearing loss and a CI could reproduce information on tone and time from songs. 12 Japanese children with CI and 6 with regular hearing are included. Children with CI sang the rhythm of the songs in a similar way to children with regular hearing. However, their tone spectrum is reduced and tone patterns had no relation with the requested songs.

 

References

1. http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/Cochlear.html
2. Music perception with cochlear implants: a review.McDermott HJ.Trends Amplif. 2004;8(2):49-82.
3. Music and Cochlear Implants. Professional series Cochlear Ltd.2008.pdf free to download. www.cochlear.com