Download Development of music perception and cognition

Development of music perception
Dowling, W.J. (1999). Development of
music perception and cognition. In
Deutsch, D. The Psychology of Music,
Chapter 15.
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
A. Infancy
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Prenatal experience
Perceptual grouping
Pitch
Melodic pitch patterns
Rhythm
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Prenatal experience
 Even before birth, the infant appears to music,
or at least to patterns of auditory stimulation.
 Very young infants recognize their mother's
voice, and this may derive from neonatal
experience with the mother's characteristic
patterns of pitch and stress accents.
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Perceptual grouping
 Auditory stream segregation (2 pitch alternating
rapidly)
 Experiment: AAAEEE ( 440Hz, 660 Hz)
 Temporal gaps:
 AAAE EEE noticed
 AAA EEE not noticed
 Explanation: An additional gap separating patterns
that were already perceptually separate was simply
lost in processing (as it tends to be with adults)
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Pitch
 Octave equivalence
 Pitch constancy
 Pitch discrimination
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Melodic pitch patterns
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Similarities between infants and adults
 easily notice differences in melodic contours
 memory for melodies
 notice changes in intervals and pitch levels of
melodies
 find changes of melodic contour more salient
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Differences between infants and adults in the
processing of pitch information in melodies
arise from the acculturation of the adults in the
tonal scale system of a particular culture
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Constraints
 main: octave equivalence
 weaker: importance given to the perfect fifth,
coupled with a limit of seven or so pitch
classes within the octave (G. Miller (1956),
The magical number seven)
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
On the inherent importance of the
perfect fifth
 Detecting changes of single pitches with 9- to
11-month-olds (conditioned head turning)
 C-E-G-E-C
 C-E-G#-E-C
 Result: No difference
 Children 4 and 6 years of age did show a
difference favoring the diatonic scale
 The acculturation in the tonal structure system
is already well begun by that age.
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
 More complicated material: The melody was
transposed to a new pitch with each repetition
 7- to 11-month-olds: changes in C-E-G-E-C
easier to detect
 6-month-olds: no difference
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
 Non-Western pattern: a Javanese pélog scale
pattern does not contain a perfect fifth, and
some of the pitches lie approximated quarter
steps in between the semitones on the piano
 The 6-month-olds (equally good for diatonic
and nondiatonic Western patterns, see above)
decreased to chance levels for the Javanese
pattern: acculturated at the level of Western
tonal material, or something about scale
structures constructed with a logarithmic
modulus such as the semitone?
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Rhythm
 Temporal grouping of tone sequences is much
like that of adults
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
B. Childhood
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Singing
Absolute pitch
Melodic contour and tonality
Rhythm
Emotion
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Singing
 9 – 12 months: spontaneously singing
 vocal play over the child's entire pitch range
 patterns of vowel sounds
 18 months: generating recognizable, repeatable songs
 24 months: brief phrases repeated over and over; contours are
replicable, but pitch wanders; same melodic and rhythmic
contour is repeated at different pitch levels; rhythm of phrases
is coherent, with rhythms often those of speech patterns;
accents within phrases and the timing of the phrases
themselves is determined by a regular beat pattern;
Lack stable pitch framework (scale) and use very limited set
phrase contours in one song – just one or two
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
 36 months: pitch still wanders but is locally stable
within one phrase
 4-year-olds: stick to stable scale pattern within a
phrase but would often slip to a new key for the next
phrase (as 3-year-olds in the example)
 5-year-olds: can hold a stable tonality throughout the
song
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Absolute pitch
 Absolute pitch is the ability to identify pitches by
their note names even in the absence of musical
context.
 Absolute pitch is typically quite rare even among
musicians, occurring in only about 4 – 8%
 Cultures where early music training is encouraged,
such as in present-Japan, the incidence of absolute
pitch among the musically trained is possibly near
50%.
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
 "Early learning" hypothesis: absolute pitch can
be acquired by anyone, but only during a
critical period ending in the fifth or sixth year
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Melody contour and tonality
 4- to 6-year olds:
 discriminating melodies on the basis of contours
 recognizing same-contour imitations of familiar
melodies
 same-contour imitations are seen as versions of the
tune
 First graders have trouble to describe pitch
direction
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
 Memory for tone sequences (3,4,6 notes)
 On each trail, a standard melody was followed
by a comparison melody in which one note of
the standard had been changed by 1 or 2
semitones.
 Task: the subject had to say which of the notes
had been changed
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
 5-year-olds: chance level with both tonal and
atonal stimuli
 6-to 10-year-olds: results for tonal and atonal
sequences diverged, with better performance
on tonal sequences
 12-year-olds: processing on atonal sequences
caught up. For 4- and 6-tone sequences, the
same pattern appeared, but the tonal-atonal
difference remained until adulthood.
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Rhythm
1. Development of the ability to control
attention in relation to the temporal sequence
of events ("Hidden melodies")
2. Development of the ability to remember and
produce rhythmic patterns
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005
Emotion
 4-year-olds: above chance level in assigning
one of four affective labels (happy, sad, angry,
afraid, using schematic faces)
 8-year-olds and adults, but not 5-year-olds,
applied "happy" and "sad" consistently to
excerpts in the major and minor, respectively
 Only adults consistently chose "happy" for
ascending contours and "sad" for descending.
A.Diederich – International University Bremen – USC – MMM – Spring 2005