Children’s perception, production, and description of musical expression.
Expression is critical to our determination of whether sounds are truly “musical,” which makes the development of sensitivity to musical expression in children a relevant topic: for research in music cognition and education. The purposes of this study were to investigate whether children can demonstrate an awareness of musical expression by: (1) discriminating between expressive and mechanical performances of well-known children‘s songs; (2) controlling the timing, dynamics, and articulation of familiar songs; and (3) verbally characterizing expressive qualities. Further, global or age-specific tendencies in the ways childrenperceive, produce, and verbally characterize musical expression were examined, as were relationships between perceptual, production, and description abilities.
Sixty children from three age groups (4-5, 6-7, and 8-9) were administered three measures which permitted them to hear, play, and discuss expressive music. Expert judges were used to generate categorical scores for the subjects on the latter two measures. These data were transformed to interval form using the rating scale analysis procedure FACETS. ANOVA was used to address the question of global or age-specific tendencies. Correlation coefficients were used to address the question of relationships between behaviors. Results indicate: (1) improvement on all tasks as a function of age; (2) a significant difference between the youngest age-group scores and the older age-groups on the perception and description measures; and (3) a significant relationship between perception and description scores, both overall and in the youngest age group.
The principal conclusions are: (1) children are able to demonstrate sensitivity to musical expression far earlier than typically assumed; (2) this ability appears contingent upon an ecologically valid testing situation and realistic music examples; (3) perception and description may invoke similar cognitive skills; and (4) the findings present clear implications for music teaching and learning.