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University Microfilms International 300 N. ZEEB RD., ANN ARBOR, Ml 48106

8222205

Young, Linda Patricia

AN INVESTIGATION OF YOUNG CHILDRENS’ MUSIC CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT USING NONVERBAL AND MANIPULATIVE TECHNIQUES

The Ohio State University Ph.D. 1982

University Microfilms International300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106

AN INVESTIGATION OF, jf&UNG CHILDRENS' MUSIC CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT

USING NONVERBAL AND MANIPULATIVE TECHNIQUES

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate

School of The Ohio State University

By

Linda Patricia Young, B.A., M.M.

*****

The Ohio State University

1982

Reading Committee: Approved By

A. Peter Costanza

Jeanette Sexton Adviser Mary Tolbert School of Music ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author wishes to express her appreciation to her adviser,

Dr. A. Peter Costanza for his guidance, support, and assistance during her years of study and association with The Ohio State University and particularly in the course of this dissertation. Appreciation is alsc extended to the other members of the author’s committee, Dr. Jeanette

Sexton and Professor Mary Tolbert for their assistance and critical insight.

Acknowledgment and appreciation are extended to all those persons who assisted in this study, colleagues, as well as, the administrators, teachers, parents, and children from the various preschools for their interest and cooperation. Also recognized are the services of The

Ohio State University Evaluation Center and Dr. Thomas Wells and the

Electronics Music Laboratory.

Finally, appreciation is expressed to the author's family and friends whose support, patience, and encouragement made the completion of this document possible.

L.P.Y.

ii VITA

March 13, 1945 ...... Born - Detroit, Michigan

1966 ...... B.A. in Music Education, Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan

1966-1970 ...... Elementary General Music Teacher, Oak Park School District, Oak Park, Michigan

1970-1971 ...... Teaching Graduate Assistant, Music Education Department, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan

1 9 7 1 ...... M.M. in Music Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan

1971-1974 ...... Instructor in Music, Eastern New Mexico University, Portales, New Mexico

1974-1976 ...... Graduate Teaching Associate, School of Music, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1976-1977 ...... Ph.D. Candidate and University Fellow in Music Education, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio

1980- ...... Lecturer in Music, The Ohio State University Lima Campus, Lima, Ohio

FIELDS OF STUDY

Major Field: Music Education

Studies in Music Education: Dr. A. Peter Costanza, Dr. Henry L. Cady, Dr. Jerry E. Lowder, Dr. Jeanette Sexton, Dr. George Kyme, Dr. Joan K. Lehr

Studies in Music Theory: Dr. William B. Poland, Dr. Joseph Levey

Studies in Education: Dr. Alexander Frazier, Dr. John Hough, Dr. Martha King, Dr. Phyllis Rolfe TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... ii

VITA ...... iii

LIST OF TABLES ...... vi

Chapter

I. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

Purpose Sub-Purposes Assumptions Definitions Delimitations

II. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Development of the Musical Perception and Response of Infants Environmental Influence on Musical Development Development of Vocal and Rhythmic Abilities Development of Aural Discrimination Concept Development

III. PROCEDURES ...... 63

Validation Procedures Pilot Study I Pilot Test IA (Fast-Slow) Results and Discussion of Pilot Test IA Pilot Test IB (Legato-Staccato) Results and Discussion of Pilot Test IB Pilot Test IC (High-Low) Results and Discussion of Pilot Test IC Pilot Test IIA (Fast-Slow) Results and Discussion of Pilot Test IIA Pilot Test IIB (Legato-Staccato) Results and Discussion of Pilot Test IIB Pilot Test IIC (High-Low) Results and Discussion of Pilot Test IIC

iv Page

IV. MAIN STUDY 104

Test A (Fast-Slow) Results and Discussion of Test A Test B (Legato-Staccato) Results and Discussion of Test B Test C (High-Low) Results and Discussion of Test C Discussion of High-Low Extra Data

V. SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS ...... 126

Need for the Study Purpose Sub-Purposes Methods and Procedures Main Study Summary of Findings Conclusions Observations Recommendations for Further Study

APPENDIXES

A. PARENTAL PERMISSION FORM AND QUESTIONNAIRE 139

B. DRAWINGS USED IN THE MAIN STUDY 142

LIST OF REFERENCES 144

v LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

1. Musical Examples for Pilot Test IA (Fast-Slow)...... 66

2. Children’s Scores, Pilot Test I A ...... 69

3. Results of Pilot Test I A ...... 69

4. Musical Examples for Pilot Test IB (Legato-Staccato) . . 74

5. Children’s Scores, Pilot Test IB ...... 76

6. Results of Pilot Test I B ...... 76

7. Musical Examples for Pilot Test IC (High-Low, Higher- Lower) ...... BO

8. Results of Pilot Test I C ...... 84

9. Musical Examples for Pilot Test IIA (Fast-Slow) ...... 88

10. Results of Pilot Test IIA ...... 89

11. Musical Examples for Pilot Test IIB (Legato-Staccato) . . 93

12. Results of Pilot Test I I B ...... 94

13. Musical Examples for Pilot Test IIC(High-Low) ...... 98

14. Results of Pilot Test I I C ...... 102

15. Musical Examples for Test A (Fast-Slow)...... 107

16. Results of Test A ...... 108

17. Mean, Standard Deviation, Kuder-Richardson 20 Reliability,and Standard Error of Measurement for Test A ...... 109

18. Musical Examples forTest B (Legato-Staccato) ...... Ill

19. Results of Test B ...... 112

vi Table Page

20. Mean, Standard Deviation, Kuder-Richardson 20 Reliability, and Standard Error of Measurement for Test B ...... 112

21. Musical Examples for Test C (High-Low)...... 116

22. Results of Test C ...... 117

23. Mean, Standard Deviation, Kuder-Richardson 20 Reliability, and Standard Error of Measurement for Test C...... 117

24. Main Study Correlation D a t a ...... 122

25. Means and Standard Deviations of the Three Main Study Subtests ...... 124

26. Overall Main Study Test S c o r e s ...... 125 Chapter. I

INTRODUCTION

Children learn to distinguish sounds in the environment long before they enter school. A child of three has a vocabulary of about one thousand words (Lenneberg, 1967). In addition to the obvious learning demonstrated by vocabulary, it is an accepted idea in educa­ tion that children know more than they can verbalize. Prior to speech, the infant and small child respond to vocal inflection, emotion and meaning (Vernon, 1960; Cappon, 1944). Research with sound has been done at the fetal stage and it has been found that even the fetus responds to sudden and high intensity tones and loud noise thirty days or more before birth (Farnsworth, 1969). Bernard and Sontag (1947) find the human fetus capable of perceiving a wide range of tones with sharp body movement and cardiac acceleration. During late stages of pregnancy, mothers have reported that a musical concert may lead to increased fetal activity (Jersild, 1954). Bruner’s research (Pines,

1964) shows that the young infant by three weeks of age has learned to expect certain sound relationships to exist in the direction and source of speaking voices. The child at four weeks can recognize who is near him by voice timbre (Fridman, 1973).

It is known that children are interested in sound; this is demonstrated in the experimentation, attention, and time given to playing with and imitating sound. Children respond spontaneously to music with their bodies and voices. A child of two years can recognize melodies (Schneider and Cady, 1965). Children are interested enough, aware enough, and involve themselves with sounds and music activity enough to be conscious of such things as changes in pitch, loudness levels, and rhythmic activity. In normal day to day exchanges with parents and others, comments would more than likely have been made concerning the relative loudness of play, records, television, conver­ sation, and speed (relative quickness or slowness) in their activities.

They have experienced single sounds and multiple sounds and should be able to discriminate these types of ideas without benefit of several years of formal teaching and labeling to precede such understanding.

Clear, completely developed thoughts about basic musical ideas which may be classified in terms of particular properties are probably not part of the preschool child's makeup.

Though the young child will not have a functioning conceptual framework at a sophisticated level, he has experienced and perceived a great deal which without doubt have formed the beginnings of concepts relative to the area of music. Though there have been some studies conducted with young children and music concept development, there is still a great deal to discover about the preschool-age child and both his immediate knowledge and present capabilities. It is important to find out where preschool-age children are conceptually and where we as preschool teachers, music educators,and curriculum developers are to continue in developing their budding concepts. It would seem that to assume no understanding is an erroneous assessment of the child's developing conceptual framework.

One problem affecting this study is that of language and labeling found in earlier work with young children. Studies in music concept development done with children already involved in the formal educating process have found that children, even up through fourth grade, seem to have difficulty with terminology, whether in expressing or describing what they hear or in confusing terms such as high with loud and fast and low with soft and slow (Andrews and Deihl, 1967; McDonald, 1970).

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to determine the musical concept development of four-year-old children by using nonverbal and manipulative techniques.

Sub-Purposes

There was also an attempt (1) to find terms which children would use naturally to describe the music concepts of tempo, articulation, and pitch, (2) to see if certain terms would be used in common by a significant number of the children, and (3) to see if these terms would be used consistently.

Assumptions

The following assumptions were made:

1. It is possible to develop a test using nonverbal and manipulative

techniques by which four-year-old children can demonstrate their

understanding of musical concepts. 2. Children of four years of age do have a basic understanding of

concepts associated with music and, if given means of expressing

that understanding other than or in addition to a verbal means,

will be able to show that understanding.

Definitions

Musical concept: A musical concept is a mental image concerning musical phenomena. In this study the particular music concepts will be those most primary in the classes of pitch, tempo, and articula­ tion: high and low, fast and slow, and legato and staccato.

Nonverbal and manipulative techniques: The techniques as used in this study are to include movement and sensory experiences and the identification or recognition of pictorial representations of movement or pitch (tones produced by musical and other sound producing agents) that will relate to counterparts of pitch, tempo, or articulation in musical examples.

Delimitations

This study was limited to the concepts fast and slow, faster and slower, legato and staccato, high and low, and higher and lower. The concept development this study seeks to define and explore*might be considered that which the child brings to the formal education experience. The age of four was chosen as being a stage little tested and just prior to formal public school experience. The intention of finding nonverbal and manipulative techniques takes into consideration prior problems and so seeks a way to determine the actual level of musical concept development, by-passing lack of experience with labels. Chapter II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

The purpose of this chapter is to survey the literature which

relates to the perceptions, responses, abilities, and music concept

development of children, and particularly preschool-aged children.

Concepts begin with the earliest attending behavior of the

infant or even prenatal child (fetus). All of our concepts begin with attending and perceiving - receiving some sensory input. From

that point, depending on our intellectual abilities and framework,

ever increasing degrees of complication and sophisticated processing

begin. Discrimination of input, sorting of information into classes,

being able to attend to various aspects of the incoming stimuli, and

separating and classifying each part are all more complicated ways of putting together new knowledge and polishing and adding dimension to

concepts we already have. The order of musical development begins with perceiving, attending, responding, showing interest, discriminat­

ing, and preferring; thereafter more complete forms of conceptualization

are able to function.

In the last ten to fifteen years there has been increasing

interest in and commitment to music for preschool-aged children and

research undertaken as a result.

5 The Tanglewood Symposium in 1967 under Problems and Responsibil­

ities— Critical Issues made the following statement: "Music has

played a less significant role than it should in the lives of children,

aged three through eight." That statement is followed by suggested

strategies for bringing together resources of early childhood education

and music educators to develop research and programs for children in

this age group.

The following questions were raised at an international seminar

on research in music education (Petzold, 1973, p. 100):

1. What are the most influential factors in home environment affecting a child's musical development? 2. What are the usual stages of musical development in the early years, and how can these stages be related to chronological age and general overall development?

4. What basic musical concepts can we expect young children to acquire, and how can they best be acquired?

12. What should be the aims of music education in the very early years?

Some of these questions and concerns have been pursued in studies

as early as the 1930s and 1940s. In spite of that research, a great

deal needs to be known about what the child, up to his entrance in

school, may actually know and understand, his conceptual progress, and

developmental levels. Some of this information from the early studies up to the present will be presented in the following pages under the

categories: Development of the Musical Perception and Response of

Infants; Environmental Influence on Musical Development; Development of Vocal and Rhythmic Abilities; Development of Aural Discrimination; and Concept Development, Development of the Musical Perception and Response of Infants

Greenberg (1976), in summarizing findings of the preceding fifteen years, states that a major proportion of the variance of adult intellectual achievement is accounted for by the time the human being is five years old. Intelligence tests have shown that while intelli­ gence continues to develop, stability of measured intelligence increases with age. Bloom (1964), in summarizing data, found that of the intelligence measured at age seventeen, fifty per cent has been developed by the age of four; or that asmuch intelligence is developed by age four as will develop in the following thirteen years.

According to Kodaly, "Music should start nine months before a baby is born" (Kodaly in Fridman, 1972, p. 63). Questions are still being raised as to whether musical skills are inherited or environ­ mentally controlled, and though much study needs to be done yet in this area, there is some consensus that the multiple skills and capabilities involved in musical behavior are attributable to both inherited capacities and experience.

It is true, however, that concept learning begins with perception and attention. A fetus responds to sudden and high-intensity tones and loud noise thirty days or more before birth (Farnsworth, 1969).

Bernard and Sontag (1947) find that the human fetus is capable of perceiving a wide range of tones and responding with sharp body move­ ment and cardiac acceleration, and Blackwell (1969) remarks, "There is some evidence of pre-natal vocalizing" (p. 115). Mothers have reported that during the late stages of pregnancy a musical concert may lead to increased fetal activity (Jersild, 1954).

There has also been reported sensitivity to sound just a few hours after birth, with a change in respiration in response to a loud noise.

An eight-day-old baby responded to a distant soft gong by ceasing to nurse and apparently attending to the sound (Peiper in Forbes and

Forbes, 1927).

Studies have shown that an auditory stimulus resembling a human heartbeat has a soothing effect on infants (Ashton, 1971). Spiegler

(1967) revealed an infant bias (measured by activity level) for the sound most approximating the human heartbeat, supporting his hypothesis that

the fetus "habituates" to a rhythmic auditory environment prenatally and is able to discriminate surprisingly minute fluctuations in the stimulus pattern postnatally ...revealing a newborn with a far more sophisticated and complex set about the world than has been traditionally assumed. (Dissertation Abstracts, 1968, 28, 3886B)

At four weeks the child can recognize who is near him by voice timbre (Fridman, 1973). Children three to nine months old are able to learn and recognize music (Kucenski, 1977). Melson (1970), in a study done with five-month-old baby girls, found that some of the subjects seemed to respond (show attention evidence by cardiac deceleration) to changes in tonal stimuli after having been familiar­ ized with one tonal series. Friedlander and Cyrulik (1970), found that infants nine to twenty-two months old showed a preference for loudness level in a program of nursery songs. When the choice was between barely discernible and easily audible, they preferred the louder stimulus. This choice was shown by manipulating a toy.

Walker, as reported in Moog (1976), found that frequency range affected the infant. Higher-pitched voices and instruments apparently had a soothing effect, whereas low-pitched voices and instruments did not. This was true whether the sound was strange or familiar to the child.

Studies done by Simon (1964) and Alford (1966) with twenty-two to forty-four-month-old twins and singletons found that subjects of all ages responded to music with frequency and degree of response showing a yearly increase for all subjects.

Perception improves with maturation (Petzold, 1960, 1963, 1966,

1969). Zimmerman (1971) summarizes perceptual development as follows:

Findings on perceptual development indicate that per­ ception of loudness develops first, followed by pitch and rhythm, with perception of harmony developing last. (p. 28)

Perception, as well as interest and the first stages of cognitive development, may be dependent upon critical stages in the child's early years. Stephens and Evans (1973) discuss a theory regarding stimulus hunger which occurs in a critical period during the first year and a half of life, when the child is particularly responsive to various kinds of stimulation. The learning which takes place during this time is referred to as exposure learning and is passive. After this time, learning comes about more from the activity of the child as he interacts with objects and people. 10

One of the great outcomes of the exposure learning is that of increased sensitivity to the stimuli which predominate during this critical period. Later on, the child will unthinkingly give close attention to sounds, sights, and odors that were conspicuous during the period of exposure learning. (p. 40)

This theory of critical stages in development is somewhat similar to one proposed by Montessori (in Barnett, 1973), in which "sensitive" periods are connected with the development of a particular skill or trait; once this more sensitive period is past, development or learn­ ing of the particular skill or trait requires much greater effort.

According to Montessori:

Children between the ages of three and six are sensi­ tive to sensory-motor activities, which provide founda­ tions for subsequent intellectual development. With such background, the intellectual growth occurs earlier than usual and is greatly accelerated.... It is during these same early years that the sensitive period for singing falls. (p. vi)

Michel (1973) finds this critical period for optimum achievement in musical reproductive abilities to occur in the fifth and sixth years of life. He does, however, describe the first year of life as significant developmentally in terms of learning to hear, to discrim­ inate, and to make the first imitative vocal responses to the environment. The first six months are referred to as the period of

"learning to hear," and at this early stage children already manifest pleasurable reactions to musical stimuli, which are evident even from the first month. He reports that

whereas infants in the first hours of their life only react to a third of all available acoustic stimuli, ... the frequency of reactions doubles in the first four weeks, and continues to increase steadily during the following months. (p. 15) 11

Michel finds that an infant will display fixed attention (acoustic

dominance or concentration) to a live musical stimulus as early as two months or even twenty-seven days. Moog (1968/1976) finds that this attentive listening occurs between the fourth and sixth months. He

states that prior to this time musical stimuli at first startle the

infant, but later have a calming effect. At five months this acoustic dominance, as described by Michel, can last up to half an hour.

Tonal discrimination to pitches as close as a third has been evidenced at six or seven months, and to timbres as early as two to three months.

This is soon followed by the child's own singing/speaking imitative vocal efforts. At about six months (from the fifth to the eighth month) after the infant has begun to listen attentively, Moog finds

the child beginning to respond to music with repetitive movement, swaying or bouncing.

Continuing with Moog's observations of early development and response, he finds that vocalization in response to music follows the stage of movement. These vocalizations fall into two classifications, musical babblings and speech babblings. Speech babbling begins two to four months before singing babbling, but the child sings before he

says his first word. Tor the most part, the songs of children prior

to one year of age do not resemble what is sung or played to them in rhythm, pitch, or melody. Even speech sounds of the words are not imitated. At about nine months the child first begins to express dislike as well as pleasure in his response to music. Around age two, children reach another stage of listening response ability, that of losing themselves in a musical experience. This differs from 12 attentive listening in that it is a deliberate choice for the child, who at two is able also to respond with vocalization and movement.

Seventy percent of four-year-old children are able to associate noises with the things or events in the environment which make the sound. The sounds used in this portion of Moog’s study were of a vacuum cleaner and traffic noises. Ninety percent of five-year-old children and fifty percent of three-year-old children are able to make these associations. The ability to identify sounds also operates in recognizing the sounds of musical instruments. Children who had experienced instruments being played were able to match the sound with the instrument.

Environmental Influence on Musical Development

A number of studies have been done in the 1960s and 1970s investigating the relationship between the home musical environment and the musical development of young children (Jenkins, 1976;

Kirkpatrick, 1962; Lenz, 1978; Moore, 1973; Reynolds, 1960; Shelton,

1965). A strong relationship was found between home environment and the child’s musical abilities. Three of these studies examined the influence of musical development upon singing skill (Kirkpatrick,

Moore, Reynolds), and the others dealt also with rhythmic response

(Moore, Shelton), discrimination of pitches and melodic direction, playing instruments, response to contrasting tempi and mood, and same/different response to melodic pattern, rhythm pattern, and modality (Shelton). The experiences in the home environment which correlated positively with the development of musical skills and 13

Interests included musical background of the parents, family interest

and participation in musical activity, opportunities to sing and move

to music with parents and other family members, opportunities to hear

musical instruments played, and opportunities to attend concerts and

hear recordings. Children who have experienced opportunities of this

type are more likely to sing naturally and spontaneously, to develop a

repertoire of songs, and to show an interest in musical instruments.

Other possible influences on the child's musical interest and

ability are position in the family (eldest children tend to do better), nursery and church school attendance, and economic level of the family

(poor musical environment was found by Kirkpatrick to exist more often

in lower-class homes).

A study done by Moog (1968/1976) found little correlation between musical ability and environment, income group or amount of music

listened to daily before the age of three.

But, between the ages of three and four, differences in home environment begin to show their effect in the field of music. Girls and boys who are taught songs and games by their parents, brothers and sisters, or in nursery schools, have a clear advantage over other children. (p. 113)

Several researchers have investigated the relationship of intelli­ gence and musical environment to the musical abilities of young

children. Sergeant and Thatcher (1974), in reviewing the research in this area, have written:

It may be concluded that musical abilities are the result of interplay between an intelligently develop­ ing organism with appropriate environmental stimula­ tion. Intelligence must therefore be regarded as an integral component of musical abilities. A favourable 14

musical environment cannot redeem the absence of the level of intelligence necessary for musical cogni­ tion, nor can intelligence alone suffice for the development of musicality. (p. 56)

Development of Vocal and Rhythmic Abilities

As noted in an earlier section on environmental influences, singing ability is influenced by the experiences and opportunities available in the home.

Moog (1968/1976) finds the earliest vocalization to music around six months of age. Before the age of one year, childrens’s songs rarely resemble what is played or sung to them. Moog reports that the first characteristic of song imitated by the young child is words or part of words, rather than pitch or rhythm. He concluded that pitch and rhythm are more difficult for the child to reproduce.

Characteristics of singing in early infancy reported in this study include primarily descending melodic lines moving in microintervals; ascending intervals, when they do occur, are usually by leap. In a study done by Drexler in 1938 with children three to six years old, she found that intervals of thirds are easier for children to sing than seconds and that descending seconds were easier for the children to sing than ascending seconds. There is an increasing ability to sing fourths and fifths with descending intervals continuing to be easier to produce than ascending intervals. Drexler's findings are similar to those of Jersild and Bienstock (1931). In a study done by

Moorhead and Pond in 1941, they found the descending minor third to be the fundamental interval in the young child's chant. Bentley 15

(1968) found "tonal inflexion" and "cadential tonal movement" as well

as the descending line to be characteristic of the young child's

songs.

Experimental studies have succeeded in enlarging upon young

children's vocal abilities. Jersild and Bienstock (1931) taught

three-year-old children over a six-month period, and these children

scored significantly higher on pitch and interval tests than their untrained controls. Reporting in 1934 on several further studies, they were again able to report significant increase in vocal abili­ ties with training and continued evidence of this initial advantage over their untrained peers even as long as two years following train­

ing. They found in their 1934 study that children apparently develop the greatest part of their potential pitch range by the time they have reached third grade and most dramatically between ages two to six.

They suggest that early training is important in capitalizing on this

early developing ability. They point out the following:

emphasis on training at this early age might help to prevent the formation of habits of disuse which might make it difficult for the child to realize his poten­ tial skill in later years. (p. 490) It is possible that a child who is encouraged to sing at an early age may acquire a degree of skill that would not be acquired if this training were deferred until later years. (p. 503)

Updegraff, Heiliger, and Learned (1938) report similar acceler­ ated development in singing ability from their study with three-, four-, and five-year-old children as well as increased participation in music activity. 16

Smith (1963) found improved tuneful singing ability in a large group situation. In earlier studies, this training had been done with

children individually or one or two at a time. He also found range an

important variable. Children were more likely to be in tune in the 111 12 lower c to a range (c = 256 Hz) than in the a to e range. More

improvement was found also from training in the lower range.

Hissen (1933), in a similar study, produced evidence that children aged twenty-one to fifty-four months improved in tonal discrimination and accuracy of tonal reproduction with training lasting from one to two nursery school semesters (ten to twenty lessons).

At least one study since that time has found that though there may be an initial improvement in singing ability with preschool train­ ing, the head start did not continue to place the children who had received the training ahead of children who had not participated in special training. Maturation eventually equalized their abilities

(Boardman, 1964).

By the age of one year, sixty percent of the subjects in Moog's study (1968/1976) were singing, by eighteen months ninety percent, and by two years every child could sing. This does not apparently mean in tune. Approximately a third of these children were able to sing something similar to what was sung to them. Between the ages of one and two, there is an increase in time spent singing. About fifteen percent of the four- and five-year-old subjects had difficulty singing in tune a song they had learned. By second grade eighty-five percent can learn to control their singing voices (Petzold, 1969). 17

There is apparently a direct relationship between the child's ability to sing accurately and a good sense of pitch (pitch percep­ tion), and conversely between the inability to sing and poor pitch perception.

There is a significant difference in the pitch discrim­ ination skills of first-grade children indentified as accurate singers and those identified as inaccurate singers, measured over a range of three octaves, at the .001 level. (Zwissler, 1971)

However, since four of the fifty children falling into the inaccurate singing group scored about seventy-five percent, it seems probable that some factor other than poor pitch perception must be the cause for their inability to sing accurately. Unlike Smith, Zwissler found no significant interaction between accuracy of singing and range.

However, the children, regardless of singing ability, were better able to identify pitch differences within the "normal singing range" than within the octave above or below. She found no evidence to indicate that first-grade children hear the pitch differences of the larger intervals more easily than those of the small intervals.

Moorhead and Pond (Pillsbury Foundation Studies, 1941) and others (Hattwick, 1933; Jersild and Bienstock, 1931) have found the average vocal range of young children to be lower than the typical range of songs found in the majority of teacher's manuals for .young children. Drexler (1938) found most of the children in her study 2 sang within the range of middle c to d# but were most comfortable at lower pitch levels. Wilson, as reviewed by Swanson (1973), found that the comfortable pitch range for six- to twelve-year-old children was a# below to a# above middle c, whereas the music series books 18 1 2 most often used the octave range d to d . She also found that "boys prefer a lower vocal range than girls" (p. 58), Wassum (1979) found vocal range and age to be significantly correlated, and vocal range to be both higher and greater than was previously known. However, this was for children in the first through sixth grades.

In a study of the music responses of very young twins and singletons (aged twenty-two to forty-four months), Simons (1964) and Alford (1966) found that stimulative music (piano, orchestral, and choral) evoked more response than sedative music. This was also found to be the case in a study by Zimny and Wiedenfeller (1962) using kindergarten, third-grade, and sixth-grade children. In fact, the response to stimulative and sedative music was even more pro­ nounced with children than with college students and middle aged psychotics (Weidenfeller and Zimny, 1962; Zimny and Weidenfeller,

1962, 1963). Simons also found more response to songs than to other stimuli, and suggested that it was probably due to the textual appeal of the songs. With piano music, subjects exhibited most response to rhythmic music, less to melodic, still less to harmonic, and least to dissonant music. He found all the children in the study exhibited some observable response to music by gross movement response more often than by imitative response. Response to music increased for all the children during the course of the study (Alford, 1966).

Children have difficulty responding to slower tempi by producing, matching, or maintaining a steady beat (Petzold, 1969; Jersild and

Bienstock, 1935; Frega, 1979; Piper and Shoemaker, 1973). Responding to a slower tempo requires greater muscle control. A child’s body 19 tempo is faster than an adult’s which may have some connection with this difficulty. However, in a study done with eight-week-old infants, Tims (1978) found that the children attended more to seda­ tive music than to either traditional stimulative or intermittent electronic music. The sedative music elicited significantly longer fixation on a visual stimulus. The experimenter concluded from his findings that sedative music may possibly be easier for the infant to process.

In their study done in 1935 with children two to five years of age, dealing with development of children's ability to keep time to the accompaniment of music, Bienstock and Jersild found that there is a relationship between the child's ability to match pitch and his ability to keep time, with hands or feet, to music. And as noted above, they also found children more successful at keeping time to music at faster tempi. Children's ability to keep accurate time to music improves greatly between the ages of two and five (Bienstock and Jersild, 1935) or the ages of three and six (Williams, 1932a).

First repetitive movement in response to music (rocking, swaying, and bouncing) begins at about the age of six months (Moog, 1968/1976).

When the child is able to walk and move around with some assurance, he begins to spin around and then to move in circles to music, singing in his fashion. Between the ages of eighteen months and two years, approximately ten percent of the children Moog studied were able to keep time to music for at least short periods of time. Until this time, although they may have been able to move slower or faster in response to obvious changes in the tempo of music, they had not been 20

ah'-to match their movements to the rhythm of the music. Moog found

only one child in ten in the three- to four-year-old group able to

match his movement to the rhythm of the music. By this age, however,

most children can distinguish fast and slow. As the child gets

older (three to four years of age), the number of movements to music

decreases but variety of movement increases. From approximately four

to six years of age, the variety of spontaneous movement declines.

Children four to six years old seem to prefer duple meter to triple

meter. They rarely use triple meter in spontaneous singing. Children

are able to copy much harder rhythms than they make use of in their

own spontaneous singing. Moog says,

given a particular level of ability, a child needs more than some chance musical stimulus to help him make forms of movement other than the instinctive swaying one. To make these new movements a child has to learn singing games and round dances, (p. 113)

Rainbow and Owen (1979) found in their study with three- and

four-year-old children that rhythm tasks involving large muscle

movements, such as marching to music and marching and clapping, were

difficult. Tasks involving chanted speech rhythms were easiest,

while clapping a steady beat and keeping the beat with rhythm sticks were the next most successful. Since four-year-old children were better

on all tasks than three-year-old children, the findings support the

hypothesis that rhythmic ability improve with age. Rainbow's study

(1977) questions- the appropriateness of the outline and progression of

activities suggested in children's texts for developing rhythmic

understanding and skill. Textbooks generally begin with stepping or 21 inarching and clapping to the beat, activities which are difficult for young children, rather than with chanting rhythm, which is much easier for children to do accurately. Frega (1979) did a study based on

Rainbow’s, using his rhythm tasks. For echoing rhythm patterns, she also found chanting easiest for the children, then speech patterns, and last clapping. Skill at all tasks improved with age. She also found that slow tempo inhibited the children from keeping the beat.

She found that the next easiest task was playing rhythm sticks or drums with the beat, which, as was noted, is a natural extension of clapping the beat. Echoing with the feet was the most difficult for the three-, four-, and five-year-old children.

De Yarman (1971) found that kindergarten and first-grade children who were instructed in mixed and unusual meters were better able to perform songs in usual meters than children instructed only in usual meters. This was true also of modality. Those children who received instruction in both tonal and nontonal music performed songs in major and minor tonalities better than those who only experienced tonal songs.

Among older children (first-, second-, and third-grade children) age, maturation, and motor ability rather than rhythm training were found to affect the child's ability to match his movement with the rhythmic stimulus (Groves, 1969).

In a study done by Dittemore (1968) with children in grades one through six, the following abilities were found to be well-developed: in first grade, minor mode, duple and triple meter; in second grade, major mode, Dorian mode, mixed meter, round and countermelody; and in third grade, unusual meter and two-part music. The sequence of

development of those musical capabilities studied was, for melody,

singing in minor mode (first grade) and in major and Dorian mode

(second grade). The last melodic skill to develop is singing nontonal

music. For rhythm the sequence is, performing in duple and triple meter (first grade), then mixed meter (second grade), and last unusual meters (third grade). The sequence for harmony is, the ability to

sing rounds and countermelody (second grade), then two-part music

(third grade), and finally three-part music.

Michel (1973), as noted earlier, found the optimum achievement

period for vocal and auditory abilities came around ages six and seven.

Development of Aural Discrimination

Those studying pitch discrimination have tested this ability using various response activities for children, for example, a singing- pitch matching response, and a verbal response as to same/different;

some have used a playing response (bells or piano), others visual cues or aids.

A problem which has turned up in the discrimination and concept

studies of a good many researchers has been that of terminology

(Andrews and Diehl, 1967; Duell, 1965 as reported in Duell and

Anderson, 1967; Hattwick, 1932, 1935; Hitchcock, 1942; Jeffrey, 1958;

King, 1972; Laverty, 1969; McGinnis, 1928; Pflederer and Sechrest,

1968a, 1968b; Van Zee, 1974). Questions continue to arise as to whether the child perceives, discriminates, understand, and, for lack of vocabulary, is unable to communicate that he does perceive, 23

discriminate, or understand. Some of these difficulties may arise from

the sequence of language development, particularly comparative

terminology (Acquiring Comparative Structures, 1973 [film]; Clark, E.,

1970; Clark, H., 1970; Donaldson and Wales, 1970; The Nature of

Things: Out of the Mouths of Babes, 1973 [film]). Piaget and Inhelder

in The Psychology of the Child (1969) state:

A child at the preoperational level understands the expressions of the higher level when they are integrated into orders or assignments ("Give that man a longer pencil," etc.), but he does not use them spontaneously. (p. 90)

In addition, the problem may very well be one of centration. Andress,

Heimann, Rinehart, and Talbert (1973) point out:

The child can arrange things in an order on the basis of one dimension (grading); for example, loud- soft sounds. The child can classify on the basis of one criterion (sorting); for example, group sounds. The child is perception bound, (pp. 8-9)

They also point out the following complication:

The young child's perceptions are synesthetic. There are no clear dividing lines among the various sense modalities. Cross-senses work in concert; thus high movement can sound high. (p. 8)

To try to circumvent the language problems, some researchers have used nonverbal means of response. In a study done by Hair

(1973), same and different verbal understanding was tested visually.

Tonal pattern tests were done by having the child match on resonator bells patterns played by the investigator. The child's understanding of "go together" and "belong together" was also tested visually.

Hair used visual and nonverbal techniques in another study done

in 1977 in which she compared verbal and nonverbal responses to tonal 24 direction discrimination by first-grade children. She found that children do significantly better with the nonverbal performance response than with the verbal tests.

Webster (1980), in his study of four- and five-year-old children, tested different modes of response in identifying tonal direction. He found the performance mode to be better than verbal or gestural mode for most children. Children who clearly understood tonal direction were able to respond to all modes correctly.

Andrews and Diehl (1967) used the nonverbal modes of movement and playing of instruments in their study with fourth-grade children, and also found that children are sometimes able to demonstrate changes in musical stimuli which they are unable to verbalize or label.

Van Zee (1974) had kindergarten children use the performance medium of a keyboard instrument, and she too found that children who were unable to verbalize terms were often able to demonstrate their understanding. She found the most confusing terms to be those involving pitch.

Hitchcock (1942) found in her study that:

Without training, children are as likely as not to use high-low with the opposite of the usual pitch meaning. This tendency apparently decreases with age, and at about five years of age, children begin to understand the usual meaning of high and low pitch. This may be due in part to concurrent change in their understanding of the visual meaning of high and low. (p. 59)

She found that "the group as a whole used other concepts more con­ sistently than high-low in describing pitch direction" (p. 59). 25

Other studies which made allowance for verbal terminology confu­ sions and used a manipulative or playing response or visual aids include: Hattwick, 1935; Jeffrey, 1958; Simons, 1974; Williams, 1932a,

1932b; and Williams, 1976, 1977.

Williams (1932a) used the keyboard to test four- and five-year- old children's understanding of high and low pitch. Following a five minute training period and practice time to associate "going upstairs" and "going downstairs" with ascending and descending lines, the children were asked to demonstrate the same patterns, and all were able to do so.

However, when the visual stimulus of the keyboard was removed and they were able to hear the stimulus, they were somewhat less successful.

Scales apparently were the easiest to discriminate; ninety percent responded correctly. Arpeggios were the next most successful (seventy- two percent correct response), and semi-tone, seconds, and thirds least successful (fifty-four, fifty-two, and fifty-two percent correct response respectively). Williams concluded that young children can more easily discriminate a longer series of pitches over a larger pitch area than a shorter series over a smaller pitch area (Williams,

1932a).

Hair (1966), who also used a playing response (with resonator bells) in testing first-grade children's ability to discriminate tonal direction, found that children did better on descending two and three note patterns than on ascending patterns.

Hattwick (1935a) also employed visual aids for testing children's understanding of pitch direction. Children from four to eight years of age were to determine whether a set of pitches played a third apart 26 on a step bell apparatus "went up" or "went down." Testing was done after a brief demonstration. All of the children five years of age or older had no difficulty in responding correctly. However, as in the

Williams study, when the visual cue was eliminated, only twenty-five percent of the five-year-old children responded correctly.

Another study done by Hattwick (1935b, 1935c) sought to determine whether children, three-and-one-half through eight years of age, were able to vocally imitate intervals (seconds and thirds) accurately or only directionally, and if directionally, whether the interval would be exaggerated. Hattwick found that the ability to match pitch

(voco-motor control) increased with age, and that children who sang the intervals directionally correctly almost always exaggerated them.

Four-year-old children have difficulty with voco-motor control and are unable to sing accurately. Fifty percent of the children at this age can use "going up" and "going down" in the visual sense but only one in ten can do so auditorially. Twenty percent of five-year-old children can sing directionally and ten percent can sing the intervals accurately. Five-year-old children, as were four-year-old children, are able to determine "going up" and "going down" visually, but auditorially, only twenty percent were able to do so before extensive practice and forty percent after practice. The six-year-old children did somewhat better. Sixty-two percent were able to sing direction­ ally and fourteen percent accurately. Six-year-old children are also able to distinguish "going up" and "going down" visually. As with five-year-old children, twenty percent of the six-year-old children were able to use "going up" and "going down" to describe 27

pitch direction prior to and fifty percent after extensive practice.

In a study done with five-and-one-half-year-old children,

Jeffrey (1958) tested discrimination of two pitches an octave and a

fifth apart with three different response methods: a button-pressing

response oriented to left and right; a singing-pitch matching response

transferred to the button-pressing response; and tone-matching on a

piano transferred to the button-pressing response. The children who matched pitches vocally or on the keyboard prior to the button-

pressing response performed significantly better than those trained with the button-pressing task. The five-and-one-half-year-olds had

difficulty matching pitch vocally.

Other studies exploring children’s understanding of high-low

and using various means of response will be reported under concept

studies. Discrimination studies and concept studies are in some cases very much alike.

The Duell and Anderson study (1967) sought to determine how large

a pitch interval first-, second-, and third-grade children could

discriminate in the natural classroom setting. The subjects were asked to determine if pairs of pure tones were same or different. The percentage of correct discriminations increased as the size of the

interval increased and vice versa; discrimination improved from first grade to third grade.

Williams (1975, 1977) found that in addition to the significance of size of melodic interval in identifying pitch direction, keeping

the intervals within the child's singing range and adding a third tone moving in the same direction significantly increased the number of 28

correct responses to the point where interval size was nearly insig­

nificant. He also found that as intervals became smaller, changes in

dynamics (soft to loud) and timbre were perceived as ascending pitch

motion.

Studies by Zwissler (1972) and Bentley (1966) found that singing

range was a significant factor in pitch discrimination.

Training and maturation were found to be positive factors affect­

ing the ability of children in grades one through six to identify the

number of parts in a short musical excerpt; also their ability to

determine whether there were one or two players per part (Etzel,

1979). Students were able to identify one or two players, but when

the number of parts was increased to three or four, correct responses

decreased.

Studies which showed that preschool children are capable of

discriminating t i m b r e have been done by Fullard (1967) and Loucks

(1974).

Piper and Shoemaker (1973) found that some tasks could be per­

formed successfully by kindergarten children who had not participated

in formal music instruction. These tasks include:

(1) distinguish between same and different phrases, (2) identify gross features of melodic contour such as ascending and descending lines, (3) distinguish between accompanied and unaccompanied music, (4) distinguish between fast and slow pulse, (5) dis­ tinguish between loud and soft dynamic levels. (p. 152)

Andress et al. (1973) state in Music in Early Childhood that the four- year-old child is able to discriminate between high and low, loud and

soft, long and short, and is less dependent on extremes to make these 29 decisions. Zimmerman (1971), summarizing research findings in her book Musical Characteristics of Children, states that there is a developmental sequence to the acquisition of abilities involved in musical discrimination. First comes loudness, then pitch and rhythm, and lastly harmony.

Hair (1973) found first-grade children capable of discriminating harmonies (chord pairs) as being same or different, and of associating a tone with a chord. Bridges' (1967) study in harmonic discrimination was done with children in kindergarten through third grade. Children were asked to choose the "most appropriate" accompaniment to known and unknown tunes. This study seems to depend upon the music class­ room experience of having heard accompanied melodies. Also, since the children were better at this form of harmonic discrimination when hearing unknown rather than familiar melodies, it appears that there may be a tendency to fixate (centration) upon the melody in the known tune to the exclusion of noticing the appropriateness of harmonic accompaniment, and perhaps to hear a more complete harmony with an unknown tune. This study found a gradual increase in harmonic discrimination from kindergarten to third grade,

A study by Fullard (1967) found that preschool children can be taught to identify selected orchestral instruments, using programmed materials and operant training.

Researchers investigating the rhythmic, harmonic, melodic, and textural discrimination skills of young children have found matura­ tion to be a significant factor in the development of auditory perception (Alford, 1971; Bridges, 1965; Duell and Anderson, 1967; Etzel, 1979; Petzold, 1960, 1963, 1966, 1969; Williams, 1975, 1977).

Petzold (1966, 1969) found in his work with six- to twelve-year-old children that the greatest development in auditory perception occurs in grades one and two.

Concept Development

Studies specifically aimed at music concept development fall into three types: (1) those which explore conservation both measuring and trying to improve this ability, (2) those which attempt to measure the music concept development of children at particular levels, and (3) studies which are directed at increasing music concept development.

Conservation, as noted in Chapter I, is the ability to keep or observe one aspect of a stimulus as unchanged or invariant though changes occur in one or more of its other dimensions or characteris­ tics. It deals with how we handle perceptions. Is the mind free to pay attention or focus in on more than one aspect of a stimulus?

Until conservation is functional for the child, he is likely to fixate or center on a particular aspect of the stimulus to the exclu­ sion of other aspects and is unable to make judgments on other than this aspect. This is called centration. Conservation is an important prerequisite in the ability to manipulate abstractions - operational thought - conceptualization.

The majority of the Piagetian studies have dealt with conserva­ tion in an attempt to separate those children who can conserve and function at the concrete operational stage from those not yet at this level or at the preoperational stage. "For Piaget, conservation can be traced through a successive growth from the child's perceptually dominated view of reality to a conceptual view" (Zimmerman, 1970, p. 49). The four-to six-year-old child is usually still preoperational or perception bound and unable to conserve. An in-between transitional stage exists around age six or seven, and then at approximately age seven he reaches the stage of conserving and also is able to classify and serialize (Pflederer, 1966, 1967). In the conservation studies the researchers attempt to develop musical tasks which are analogous to those developed by Piaget. Music conservation tasks are designed to fit the Piagetian pattern by varying some aspect of a musical stimulus while leaving another aspect the same. For instance, when the task is designed to be conservation of melody, the pitches remain the same but rhythm, meter or tempo would change. If the task were conservation of rhythm, tonal pattern could vary. Most studies used single deformations in any one task. Some, however, used double de­ formations (Zimmerman and Sechrest, 1968). Some tests were done in the individually administered manner that Piaget used and some were group administered.

The earliest studies dealing with conservation were done by

Pflederer (1964, 1966), Pflederer and Sechrest (1968a, 1968b),

Pflederer-Zimmerman and Sechrest (1970), and Zimmerman and Sechrest

(1968). Serafine (1980) lists and describes a number of other con­ servation studies done by Bettison, 1976; Botvin, 1974; Foley, 1975;

Serafine, 1975; and Thorn, 1973. 32

Conservation tasks have dealt with meter, rhythm, melody, tonal pattern, and duration. Findings overall have included the fact that there is a positive relationship between age and successful response or task performance.

The eight-year-old children were better able to conserve meter ... and the tonal and rhythmic patterns ... than were the five-year-olds. (Pflederer, 1966, p. 61)

Tasks involving conservation of meter and conservation of melody under deformation of durational values

indicated differences in the kind of explanations given by the five- and eight-year-old children. The intuitive answers of the kindergarten children showed a lack of conservation and were indicative of preoperational thought. The answers of the eight- year-old children reflected the intermediate stage of conservation. (Pflederer, 1966, p. 61)

Kind (1972) in working with first-, fifth-, and ninth-grade children, found perception of same and different improved with grade level and social class, and response became more specific and detailed by grade level.

Serafine (1980) calls into question the assumption made about the relationship between age and task performance. She states that,

"Indeed, in almost any cognitive or perceptual task, older children can be expected to do better than younger ones" (p. 9). She points out that the relationship does not prove validity of the tasks nor the existence of stages relating to those theorized by Piaget. However,

Pflederer-Zimmerman and Sechrest found in their 1968(a) study that though the performance improved in a nearly linear progression in relationship to age, if responses were categorized into those responses indicating some degree of conservation and those that showed good 33 conservation and consistency in conservation across tasks, the data show a clear progression in conservation through the age groups.

Continuing with the findings in conservation studies, improvement in conservation of tonal pattern preceded conservation of rhythm. In tonal pattern conservation, changes of instrument or addition of harmony were easier for the subjects to hear and still hear the tonal pattern as invariant than were rhythm and contour changes, which create more radical differences in the stimulus (Pflederer-Zimmerman and Sechrest, 1970). King found timbre changes were easiest to identify followed by duration, pitch, and identity.

Pflederer and Sechrest (1968b) found centering on tone color interfering with conservation in their study with children five through thirteen years of age. A study done by Jetter (1978) found the dominating factor to be melody. Conservation has been shown to be related to musical ability in a study done with kindergarten children (Norton, 1979, 1980).

Some researchers have found improved conservation with training

(Botvin, 1974; Foley, 1975) and some have found no significant improvement (Dolber, 1978; Pflederer and Sechrest, 1968a, 1968b;

Searfine, 1980). However, in the 1970 Pflederer-Zimmerman and

Sechrest study, they state that

we do believe that our results show that even young children are capable of some comprehension of fairly complex musical concepts, and we may be doing stu­ dents a disservice by bringing them along too slowly in their musical education. Concepts such as harmony, inversion, and mode may well be teachable to children at younger ages than we imagined, (p. 34) 34

Botvin (1974) found that training not only improved musical

conservation tasks but transferred to the Piagetian conservation

tasks.

The Andrews and Diehl study (1967) was one of the earliest

studies attempting to learn something about the music concept devel­

opment of elementary school children. The study was done with four hundred and twenty-nine fourth-grade-public-school children and dealt with the elements of pitch, loudness, and duration. A Battery of

Musical Concept Measures was developed which included verbal, listen­

ing, manipulative, and overt means of identifying and measuring the

concepts of pitch, duration, and loudness. The Verbal and Listening

Measures were written group measures and the Manipulative and Overt

Measures were nonwritten individual measures. Reliability for the four measures was as follows: Verbal, .71; Listening, .85; Manipula­ tive, .66; and Overt, .64. The Verbal Measure was composed of eighteen multiple-choice items. The Listening Measure involved testing for a predominant change within an orchestral excerpt of pitch, duration, or loudness. In those items having a change in one dimension, the subject was required to respond as to whether it was faster, lower, or softer. A second group had changes in two dimen­ sions. The Manipulative Measure was developed to provide a means of demonstrating understanding with bodily movement and verbal-oral response to excerpts from orchestral literature. The Verbal and

Listening Measures were generally superior to the Overt and

Manipulative Measures in reliability. However, the nonwritten 35

Manipulative and Overt measures, though less reliable and more diffi­ cult and time consuming to administer, are a more feasible way of working with younger children or children having reading or language problems. The Battery of Music Concept Measures was found to be an effective tool in identifying fourth-grade children's musical concept development.

The authors found that children seemed to have a more highly developed concept of loudness and duration than pitch. They also found that some children seemed to understand the concepts of pitch, duration, and loudness as measured by the Battery but were unable to label them appropriately, confusing the terms "high," "loud," and

"fast" and "low," "soft," and "slow." The authors had some expecta­ tion of this confusion and suggested that it may be due to the frequent association of the terms. The authors suggest more attention be paid to teaching correct labels, that research be done to determine how children acquire these semantic confusions, and that studies be done with children based on free verbal response to music in order to discover characteristic vocabulary they may use to describe what they hear.

McDonald (1970) attempted to determine if the environment played a role in elementary school children's ability to identify musical concepts. She used the Listening Measure of the Andrews and Diehl

Battery of Music Concept Measures in developing her own listening test.

McDonald's test was also directed at fourth-grade children but had two specific populations (a middle-class and a lower-class population), in order to compare concept development between the two. She also 36 attempted to find possible relationships between chronological age, mental age, vocabulary comprehension, reading comprehension, and musical concept identification.

In the first set of items, the subject heard eleven musical excerpts, each of which changed in one dominant aspect: faster, slower, louder, softer, higher, or lower. The subject was given a choice of five of these changes. The second section of the test was composed of eight excerpts in each of which two dominant changes were evident. The last section of the test consisted of five paired excerpts. The subjects were asked how the second excerpt differed from the first excerpt. She found that there is a significant differ­ ence between lower-class and middle-class, fourth-grade children in their ability to identify musical concepts as found in standard orchestral literature. Middle-class children were more successful in labeling musical phenomena than lower-class children. There is a significant relationship between mental age and music concept identi­ fication for middle-class, fourth-grade children. No significant relationships were found between the variables of mental age, chronological age, vocabulary comprehension, reading comprehension, and musical concept identification for lower-class, fourth-grade children. The test proved reliable for middle-class children but not for the lower-class children. Test items involving pitch were found to be the most difficult for the children while those involving loud­ ness were the easiest. She also found children having difficulty with labeling concepts which she believed were based on semantic confusions. 37

McDonald suggested that a listening test which uses music more

familiar to the child's out of school experiences might be a better

vehicle for measuring his music concept development.

Walls (1973) based his study on McDonald's in pursuing the idea

that the difference in concept identification between middle- and

lower-class children would be eliminated by using popular music which

is more familiar to lower-class children. He also added the variable

(dimension) of race. He used his own popular music test and the

McDonald test with middle-class-white students and lower-class-black

children. Ha found that: lower-class-black and middle-class-white

children found the McDonald test more difficult than the Walls test,

and scored higher on the Walls than on the McDonald test, though

lower-classrblack students had more difficulty than middle-class-white

students on the Walls test. Walls suggested that popular music be

used in the school curriculum in teaching music concepts and that it would be particularly effective with lower-class-black children.

Rost (1974) also compared the effects of types of musical liter­

ature as well as environment on elementary school childrens' (fourth-

grade children again) identification of musical concepts. He used a

shortened version of the McDonald Listening Test and a test he

developed using instrumental versions of elementary classroom musical

literature. The items were set up in a way similar to the previous

tests. Rost was also looking for possible relationships between

intelligence, chronological age, musical environment, and musical

concept identification. Results indicate a significant relationship

between the Rost Listening Test scores and intelligence, the Rost 38

Listening Test scores and musical environment for both middle- and lower-class children, between the Rost Listening Test scores and chronological age for lower-class children, and between the McDonald

Listening Test scores and intelligence in both groups. There was a significant relationship between scores on the McDonald measure and chronological age and musical environment for the lower-class group.

Middle-class, fourth-grade children are more accurate (had significantly higher scores) in identifying the musical concepts of pitch, loudness, and duration as measured by both the Rost and McDonald Listening Tests than the lower-class, fourth-grade children. The Rost test was less reliable for the lower-class children than it was for the middle-class children and apparently still too difficult for the lower-class chil­ dren. Rost test scores were more highly correlated with intelligence than with any other variable, much higher than musical environment.

Truax (1971) did a study in which fourth-grade children demon­ strated their concept of instrumental timbre by choosing from twelve pairs of verbal descriptors. The instrumental timbres were flute, oboe, clarinet, trumpet, and French horn. The verbal descriptors included: "bright-dark," "heavy-light," "small-large," "clear-hazy,"

"shallow-deep," "thin-full," "delicate-rugged," "smooth-rough,"

"hollow-solid," "edgy-rounded," "weak-powerful," and "piercing-mellow."

Each set of descriptors was arranged on a five point scale. Truax's results show that there was agreement in the use of the majority of the descriptors by fourth-grade children. Children's descriptions of perceived instrumental timbre are influenced by the nature of the musical example. Scott (1979) did a study with preschool children, ages three to five, to determine whether they have developed concepts of pitch or are able to develop concepts of pitch using a nonverbal manipulative measure to avoid labeling problems. She first determined the chil­ dren's high and low timbre preference from the following: trumpet, xylophone, violin, clarinet, piano, and modified sine wave. Xylophone was determined to be the high timbre preference and modified sine wave,

the low preference. The children were to classify differing pitch stimuli on the basis of a common critical attribute. The common attributes by which children were to group the pitch stimuli were: first, register; second, melodic contour; and last, interval size.

Positive exemplars were those which were alike and negative exemplars were the pitches, contour, or interval size which did not fit, i.e., did not match. Each stimulus was controlled by a box with a switch attached to a cassette recorder. The children demonstrated positive and negative by placing the boxes which had played the stimulus examples into appropriate rows in a tray. Stimuli were controlled for loudness and duration in order to focus on pitch. There was a training period with a feedback reinforcement device (in the form of a mouse whose nose lit up). The concepts were placed in the order of register, melodic contour, and interval size because it was the assumed hier­ archy of difficulty. Children were grouped by age (thirty-six to forty-eight months of age and forty-nine to sixty months of age) and assigned to high timbre and low timbre preference treatment groups.

It was found that preschool children are capable of forming concepts of pitch register, melodic contour, and interval size. The most 40 developed concept was pitch register. The older group of children were able to demonstrate understanding more often than the younger group of

children. Some children in this study were unable to reach criterion but seemed to have partial understanding of concepts by completing two or more sets correctly. These children may have been in that inter­ mediate intuitive operational period in the Piagetian developmental sequence.

Schultz, as reviewed in Crews (1972), developed a test to measure how children in grades two through eight conceptually organize (listen and identify) changes in a musical context involving melody, rhythm, tempo, instrumental timbre, mode, and key. The children compared sets of phrases with a change in one musical element (concept area). Six examples were the same (no change). The children indicated their decisions on answer sheets. The examples were played on piano, violin, clarinet, trumpet, or xylophone. Results show the largest number of incorrect responses were marked same and the next most frequent being melody. These two answers were the first two response possibilities at the top of the answer sheet which may have had some affect on response when indecision reigned. The most correct responses were to change of instrument. The author suggests that the children may have simply guessed same or melody unless they were fairly sure and the instrument timbres being very different may have been the easiest changes for the children to hear. The older the children, the more consistently correct were the responses; however, same continued to be the largest incorrect category. The children had the most difficulty with conservation of melody. The next most 41

difficult was conservation of key. The amount of change in melody,

instrument, or key did not affect difficulty for the children but

change in rhythm, tempo,and mode was easier when the change was more

extreme. Schultz found that concept areas seemed to be mastered in

an order by grade level. Change in instrument was apparently easiest

for even the youngest, by third grade, key was mastered; fifth grade, melody; sixth, rhythm; seventh, tempo; and eighth, mode.

The purpose of Jeffrey's study (1980) was to develop a curriculum

sequence which would teach the three concepts of steadiness, longer

and shorter sounds, and measured silence to first-grade students.

Seventy-five percent of the students were able to meet the criteria

required for satisfactory achievement.

Laverty (1969) did a study which expanded upon and tested the

adaptability of the Verbal and Listening Measures of the Andrews and

Diehl Battery of Musical Concept Measures for use in grades three,

five, and seven. On the Listening Measure, free-and multiple choice

response formats were used in order to compare efficiency. Five hundred and sixty-five students in grades three, five, and seven were

involved in the study. Fifty-six students were chosen for the free-

response testing. It was found that scores improved significantly by

grade level, except for loudness. The biggest improvement in pitch

and duration scores was between fifth- and seventh-grade students.

For loudness, the most improvement occurred between third and fifth

grade. The author's findings indicate that the measures are appro­

priate for grade levels other than fourth. In comparing the multiple-

choice and free-response formats used with the Listening Measure, it 42 was found that the multiple-choice format elicited over twice as many

correct responses as the free-response format. The free-response for­ mat revealed labeling problems with children exhibiting confusion in

the use of the terms "higher" and "lower." They used these terms to

describe changes in both pitch and loudness. Laverty (1969) concluded

that the concept of loudness may be developed at an earlier age than

the concepts of pitch and duration.

In Loucks’study (1974), three different tests measuring different abilities were set up to find which would be most feasible in measur­

ing instrumental timbre concepts of four- and five-year-old children.

The children were to compare sets of two musical excerpts to determine

if the instrument(s) were the same, compare sets of three musical excerpts to find which two of the three were the most alike in timbre, and classify timbre examples as to wind, electronic, string, or percussion. A wide variety of musical excerpts were used including

Western, Classical, Folk, Jazz, Rock, African, Indian, and Chinese music. The test consisted of twenty-five items and was individually administered.

The children used nonverbal means of indicating the stimuli that were similar (the two of three most alike) by pointing to channel indicator lights. In the third section, the children pointed to a picture representing the instrument family. To the first, same or different instrument(s), section of the test, the children responded yes for same and no for different.

The comparison of two musical excerpts as to same or different instrument(s) was the easiest task for the children, and the most 43 difficult was comparing three excerpts to determine which two were most alike in timbre. Loucks did develop a reliable, valid instrument to measure the preschool-age child’s concepts of instrumental timbre. He found a significant relationship between age and test score and concluded that instrumental timbre concepts are apparently developing during this age period. He found no difference between boys'and girls' conceptual ability.

Romanek (1974) developed a self-instructional program teaching the musical concepts of pitch (high and low), duration (fast and slow), and loudness to preschool children. The materials included cassette tapes containing songs, musical examples, and environmental sounds, and illustrated books in storybook form. Children responded by pointing, drawing circles, triangles, and lines to indicate the louder, softer, higher, lower, faster, slower song, musical example, or environmental sound. Children also responded to the program by playing instruments (for instance, the drum to demonstrate playing gradually slower and faster) singing, listening,and moving to music.

There were twelve lessons, the first and last of which were a music concept test devised by the investigator. It was found that preschool-age children were able to learn the concepts of pitch, duration, and loudness. The concept of loudness is easily acquired but pitch discrimination and duration are apparently more difficult for preschool-age children to perceive. The self-instructional program was motivating to this age child and did hold their attention.

There was a significant difference between the experimental and the control group posttest scores at the .001 level. She used among other 44 examples, a bird chirp and a lion roar with appropriate pictures for the child to circle to indicate higher or lower sound. She also included a police siren, the sound of a big truck, a cow mooing, children's voices, and thunder, as well as actual instruments for the child to compare and circle the higher or lower sound.

A study done by Jetter (1978) provided evidence that four-year- old children can develop concepts of clarinet, trombone, and cello timbre, exact melodic repetition, and half-step1 intervals when Aural-

Visual Identification Instructional (AVII) model materials are used.

Student responses were at first given orally in a group to provide a comfortable means of supplying support, feedback, and reinforcement; then individual practice sheets were provided to record responses.

The instruction included the following steps: first, a presentation of positive examples of the concept stimulus and naming it, then presenting a negative example, the introduction of irrelevant characteristics, provide drill, require an active response from the students, and provide immediate feedback.

Eight of nine children learned to identify the half-step inter­ val. There was evidence of conservation as well as centration in the task involving exact repetition of the melody. Recognition of the melody hampered perception of the altered forms of the melody and apparently caused the children to ignore any alteration as long as they still could perceive the melody.

Wassum (1979) did a study over a period of five years with forty children to test their concept of tonality. The children were tested for the concept of tonality each year by song performance and scale 45 performance and they were also tested for ranges. The children were divided into three groups: (1) those tested from kindergarten through fourth grades, (2) those tested from first through fifth grades, and

(3) those tested from second through sixth grades. The groups involved in the study showed significant relationship all during the five years between age and range and between age and the concept of tonality through song singing. The third and older group of children exhibited a significant relationship between age and the concept of tonality through singing scales. The third group did better in all areas, showing age and maturity related to performance.

Greenberg (1972) developed a Preschool Music Achievement Test designed to measure the conceptual growth of children involved in The

University of Hawaii Preschool Music Curriculum. The curriculum program and test were used with five Head Start preschool classes.

Results indicate that:

Preschool children are able to develop concepts about music if guided and meaningful instruction is given by the teacher. PMAT scores indicate that concepts of beat, tempo, and dynamics may be the first to develop in the young child. Concepts about pitch and melody, melodic rhythm, harmony, and form may be more difficult to develop. (p. 15)

Hair (1977) investigated the ability of first-grade children to discriminate tonal direction on verbal and nonverbal tasks. The study was done over a two-week period and began and ended with a group written test. She tested first the children's ability to perceive tonal patterns by having them match the ascending and descending patterns played for them using resonator bells (a nonverbal task).

The child was only given those bells appropriate to the pattern used 46 and was asked to play the bells prior to hearing the pattern. The resonator bells used by the investigator to give the tonal stimulus to be copied by the child were not visible to the child. Correct responses were rewarded with smiley faces. The children were allowed to use their own terminology to describe pitch direction. Other verbal tasks included written responses on an answer sheet to show dicrimination between tonal patterns.

The author was also investigating children's word usage in describing tonal direction, looking for possible relationships between scores and sex, race or ability grouping, for possible dif­ ferences in scores between ascending and descending performance responses, between difference in number of correct responses to three- versus four-note patterns, and the number of trials needed in order to match a playing response correctly.

Scores were significantly higher for the nonverbal performance test than for the written or spoken verbal tests. The mean correct scores were higher for the written than the spoken test. The scores on the second written test were lower than on the first. White children scored significantly higher on the written and performance tests than black children, although there was no significant differ­ ence in scores by sex. Ability groupings did make a significant difference on the written and performance tests but not on the spoken tests. Descending patterns were easier for the children to duplicate than ascending patterns; they scored significantly higher. They scored higher on two-and three-note descending patterns than on the two-and three-note ascending patterns. The mean correct scores were significantly higher on three-note items than on two- and four-note items for both written tests. The number of tones had an effect on responses when the responses were written but not on the performance responses. It was found that if the child was going to answer correctly, he usually did so on the first trial. Types of responses fall into the following categories: gesture, thirty-nine percent; verbal, thirty-five percent; and a combination, twenty-six percent.

Sixty-five percent used gestures of some sort. Only twenty-two percent of the thirty-nine percent who gave correct responses to change in direction could label them correctly. Only five percent of the one hundred and forty-four subjects were able to do so. An­ other five percent of the children could duplicate the pitches but were unwilling or unable to verbalize. Of the twenty-two percent total correct responses, eight percent were verbal, ten percent were gesture, and five percent, a combination.

Taebel’s study (1974) sought to measure the effect of four instructional modes (discover, verbal cue, verbal response, and motor response) on performance of music concept tasks and to compare music concept performance by age level. The age levels involved were kindergarten, first, and second grade and the concepts were louder, faster, higher, and shorter. The investigator developed a tes.t consisting of four parts to measure the four concept areas of volume, tempo, pitch, and duration. Each test was composed of twenty-two items and each item had a positive and a negative instance of the concept. The positive instance of the relevant concept was "more of" or higher, louder, longer in duration, and faster in tempo. If the 48

child always chose the positive instance, he was assumed to have used a

conceptual rule such as "the loudest one."

Children in the discovery instructional mode were simply asked to

identify the pattern that was different with no additional explanation.

The children needed to discover the relevant feature for themselves.

Children in the verbal cue instructional mode were instructed to

listen for the louder, faster, higher, or shorter sounding melody and

children in the verbal response instructional mode were asked to

explain the change between the two instances without help from the

experimenter. Children in the motor response instructional mode were

asked to tap, sing, hum, or move in response to the melodic patterns.

Children were all rewarded for correct response.

All grade levels demonstrated conceptual understanding of volume,

first- and second-grade children demonstrated understanding of tempo

and duration, and first-grade children of pitch. Age was found to be

a significant variable.

The greatest difference in mean scores was between kindergarten

and first-grade children. First-grade children's performance on the

test was nearly as good as the second-grade children's but, when asked

to explain their choice verbally, they gave nearly as many incorrect

responses as did the kindergarten children. There was a twenty percent

increase in correct verbal responses between first- and second-grade

children but only six percent between kindergarten and first-grade

children.

There was a significant difference between the means of the different instructional modes on the tempo test. The verbal cue was 49 higher than the discovery mode at all three age levels. The verbal cue was also higher than the motor mode at the kindergarten and second- grade levels. There were no significant differences between the verbal cue and the verbal response mode at any age level.

Instructional mode was not significant on the pitch test. There were more incorrect than correct verbal responses at all grade levels. Verbal accuracy improved significantly between kindergarten and first grade. Few children used the terms"higher" or "up" to describe pitch difference. The most common term used by kinder­ garten children to describe pitch changes was "louder" (Taebel, 1974).

There was no difference in means on the duration tests. Children rarely use the term "shorter" to describe staccato transformation of the melodies. They more commonly used the terms "jumpy," "jerky,"

"bouncy," or "space between the notes."

For the tempo test, the verbal cue was higher than the discovery mode at all three age levels. The verbal cue was also higher than the motor mode at the kindergarten and second-grade levels.

There was a wide difference in performance between the pitch and volume tests. The author suggests that children have had more experience with loud and soft than with high and low sounds; volume and pitch seem to happen frequently in combination, and also that the terms are often used interchangeably. There is also the spatial use of high and low. Kingergarten children tended to fixate on volume whether changes in this variable were present or not. Overall, age level was apparently of greater significance than instructional mode. 50

The problem set up in the Van Zee study (1974) was to determine the comparative value of verbalization of musical understandings versus demonstrating that understanding on a simple instrument. The children were to discriminate differences in pitch, melodic contour (up, down, straight across), duration of tones (longer, shorter), and rhythm patterns (even-smooth, jerky or uneven) and demonstrate their under­ standing of the terms most commonly used in referring to pitch, melodic contour, duration, and rhythm pattern on a simple keyboard instrument. Age, sex, and socioeconomic background were included as variables in order to determine any possible effect on kindergarten children's understanding and/or response. She was also looking for possible commonality of vocabulary used by kindergarten-age children in describing the concepts of pitch, melodic contour, duration, and rhythm pattern. There were eighty children participating in the study, twenty children, equal in number of boys and girls, were randomly chosen from four public schools, one rural, two urban, one of which was classified as a Title I school, and one suburban school.

The mean age of the children was six years and two months. Back­ grounds were checked for similarity; questionnaires sent to school music teachers asked the types of activities and vocabulary that children had experienced in the music classroom. Two tests were developed, the first of which had two sections.

In Test A-l, the children were asked to indicate if two musical examples were the same or different, and in A-2, the investigator asked the child how the second example differed from the first if the child had correctly determined an item pair to be different in A-l. Correct answers for each concept when applicable were as follows

for the concept of pitch, "high," "higher," "low" or "lower" were

acceptable. "Up" and "down" were not acceptable, unless they were

used in combination with "higher" or "lower." For melodic contour,

appropriate terms were "up," "down," or "straight across," "up higher

or "down lower" in comparing a second set of pitches to a first. For

duration of tones, "longer,” "shorter," "short" or "long" were con­

sidered appropriate responses in comparing two tonal patterns, the

second of which may be altered in the duration of one or two tones.

For rhythm pattern, correct responses in comparing two otherwise like

tonal patterns were "even," "smooth," "uneven," or "jerky."

Test B was a demonstration test with a small electronic organ

on which the children responded to directions to play "higher",

"lower," "up", "down," "straight across," "short," "long," "smooth," and "jerky." There were two exploratory trials to determine materials and procedures.

Children were better able to discriminate, as in Test A-l, than

to verbally describe the differences, particularly for rhythm and duration items. Though all discrimination itepss-^fore possible for kindergarten children, the discrimination items dealing with pitch were easiest. Larger intervals and unisons were least difficult and

seconds the most difficult. There were many more incorrect responses

to A-2 than to the discrimination tasks in A-l in all areas.

On the verbal response (A-2) portion of the test, it was found

that the most commonly confused terms were between those associated with pitch and those associated with volume, i.e., "loud" was used 52 for successively higher pitch. Other incorrect terms used to describe higher pitch were: "stronger," "hard," "heavy," "noisier,” and

"rocket." Other "incorrect" responses to lower pitch included:

"easy," "tiny," "littler," and "shorter" (pp. 66-67).

Many responses evidenced the kind of vocabulary and activities included in the respective music classrooms of the children.

Thirty-five percent of the children interchanged up for high and down for low in describing pitch direction in the melodic contour section of the test. These responses were unacceptable as defined by the author but the author stated that this does not necessarily indicate lack of understanding but merely of the more correct terminology.

For duration, most of the children in Schools A and B and nearly half of the children in Schools C and D gave no correct responses.

This was also true for rhythm pattern items. There were also fewer overt responses to items in these two sections than for pitch items.

Terms used to describe relative duration included "fast," "slow,"

"stopped," "bumpy," "waited," "bigger," and "smaller.” Some children responded imitatively and ten percent used the terms "high" and

"low." "Even" and "uneven" were used by one child, but incorrectly.

Rhythm pattern items, already noted as difficult for kindergarten children, were apparently responded to in terms of separate tones rather than as a complete entity. Responses of "long" and "short" were used by fifty percent of the children. Children's responses were different from the different schools. Children from the two schools that had more rhythm movement activities in their music 53 programs produced more verbal responses.

I t was found that kindergarten children are better able to express their understanding of pitch, melodic contour, duration of tones, and rhythm pattern through performance than through verbal description, at least for concepts of duration and rhythm pattern, significant at the p = .0001 level. There was not a significant difference in mean scores between verbal and nonverbal responses for pitch and contour.

Van Zee did not find age to be a significant factor but did find socioeconomic background to have a significant effect. The children from the upper middle class urban school received the highest scores; the children from the Title I school received the lowest scores.

Some of the differences in scoresmay have been due to the terminology and movement experiences used by the teacher with the students.

Boys did better than girls on the contour and rhythm pattern portion of the test but this, Van Zee suggested, may have been attributable to the boys'more outgoing willingness to respond. Most children were unable to verbalize the conceptual understandings they could demonstrate. Verbalization was closely related to overt move­ ment and appeared to be mutually reinforcing. Children who had had many kinesthetic experiences in their music class were better able to express the concepts verbally and received the highest scores on the test.

Children tended to use hand, body, or singing responses along with or instead of verbal responses to Test A-2. Forty-six percent of the children used overt responses and seventy-five percent of these were singing responses. The Title I school children most often 54 used overt responses instead of verbal responses. The upper middle class urban school children were the most verbal though they still used hand and body movements in combination with their verbal responses.

Their teacher had used many kinesthetic activities in developing musical concepts.

A common vocabulary was not discovered with the kindergarten children in their verbal-descriptive response to the concept items.

With pitch, larger intervals and unison were easier to discrim­ inate than smaller intervals. The interval of the second was the most difficult. With duration, discrimination of items containing eighth notes was easier than those containing half notes. And with rhythm pattern, there were no differences in difficulty (they were all very difficult).

Apparently a majority of the children in this study did under­ stand the terminology connected with pitch, melodic contour, duration of tones, and rhythm pattern as indicated by their performance

(demonstration in response to directions using these terms). Test B results show the mean number of correct responses to exceed the mean number of incorrect responses except with the contour items. Many children who could not verbalize the discriminated differences were able to demonstrate understanding of the appropriate terminology.

Among Van Zee’s observations are the following: kindergarten children need a great deal of experience with musical terminology before they are able to use it accurately; kindergarten children seem to use physical movement spontaneously in responding to and showing understanding of musical concepts; and that kindergarten 55 children, seem to need overt physical response in developing musical concepts.

Van Zee recommends that kindergarten teachers teach correct usage of terminology and that they work with more complete patterns in perception and response and not individual isolated musical stimuli.

She also suggests that children should be provided with many overt kinesthetic activities in their exploration and development of music concepts and that they be encouraged to express verbally their musical understandings. Van Zee concludes that

the ability of kindergarten children to deal verbally with the properties of musical sounds does not neces­ sarily develop concurrently with their ability to perceive and understand them. (p. 79)

The purpose of the Hitchcock study (1942) was to discover what effect terminology has upon children's ability to describe changes in pitch direction. The author was also interested in comparing the usual high and low terminology, which is a learned association, with other words which may function more consistently for children three through five years of age. She wished to find what meaning children of this age and untrained in conventional terminology associate with high and low pitch.

The plan of the experiment was to test children's visual concept of high and low. The children's visual understanding of high and low was tested by the placement of pictures on cards (two pictures on a card, one above the other). Questions about which was higher and which was lower could be answered by movement of fingers, hand, or head. The next step was to find words children use to describe pitch 56

change and use these together with "high" and "low" in a final series

of pitch tests to determine the most consistent and efficient terms

used by the children to identify pitch changes. The test seeking the

children's terms for high and low pitch had the child first determine

if the two notes of an interval played on Deagan Rhythm Bells "stayed

the same" or "changed." If the answer was that it changed, he was

asked how it changed. Responses were recorded.

Hitchcock chose possible word pairs to test for possible effec­

tive counterparts to the traditional "high" and "low" based on a

theory of synesthesia. This phenomenon is an association between

sensory fields (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, emotional) where the

person experiencing the affect is presented with one stimuli but is

aware of a secondary sensual affect. This phenomenon is experienced

by from five to twelve percent of the population (depending on the

study and investigator) and its origin (cause) is explained in a

variety of ways, none of which has been proven.

Four word pairs were chosen for this study: "light-heavy,"

which is kinesthetic, "dark-light," which is visual, and "big-little,"

as well as "high-low," which could be kinesthetic or visual. The

study sought to determine if a process like synesthesia may be present

and have some effect on the way children use the terms to discriminate

and show understanding of high and low pitch. The experimenter

(Hitchcock) expected, based on previous research, to have children

associate "light" with high pitch, "dark" with low pitch, "big" with

low pitch, and "little" with high pitch. Because children relate high with big, "high" was expected to be associated with low pitch. 57

Because of the connection of low with little, children were expected to associate "low" with high pitch.

Hitchcock concluded that since the groups used in the studies which established these conclusions were an unselected general popula­ tion, that these relationships of pitch to color and pitch to size would exist to some extent with the ordinary population and not just with those having true synesthesia.

The concept sets (word pairs) which were to be used in addition to high and low in the pitch test were each tested by using toys exemplifying each concept. Each child handled and was asked questions about the toy to determine his understanding of the concept and terminology used to express it.

There were twenty-seven children, fifteen boys and twelve girls, ages three through eight, participating in the study. The experiment was carried out over a spring and summer school session. The pitches were produced by a set of Deagan Rhythm Balls which are equivalent to the two highest octaves on a piano. There were no visual cues, the instrument and the experimenter’s hand were hidden from view.

Results show that "high-low ranked lowest in value of the con­ cepts used for making pitch judgments" and that "No concept ranked high in value for all age and sex groups as outstandingly as high-low ranked low" (p. 35).

"Light-heavy" ranked highest for three-year-old children,

"light-dark" for four-year-old children, and "little-big" for five-year- old children. For all boys, "light-heavy" ranked highest, for all girls, "light-dark and for the entire group both "light-heavy" and 58

"light-dark." When the concepts were ranked by consistency of use in making pitch judgments, "light-dark" was highest followed by "big- little," "heavy-light," and last, "high-low." Again in this ranking,

"high-low" differed in score more from the third ranked "heavy-light" than the first ranked "light-dark" differed from the third ranked

"heavy-light." No matter what the ranking technique, "high-low" was last. "There was less group agreement as to the pitch meaning of high-low than of any other concept tested" (p. 37). Younger children tend to use "high" and "low" opposite to conventional use. The younger child's concepts of length and size are directly related to his own size and perspective. This tendency decreases with age and apparently with increasing understanding of visual and spatial perception.

A child's environment plays a significant part in developing his musical skills and interest in musical phenomena. His at-home and other preschool experience affect his repertoire of songs, games, his singing skill, rhythmic response, and general musical ability

(Kirkpatrick, 1962; Moog, 1968/1976; Moore, 1973; Reynolds, 1960;

Sergeant and Thatcher, 1974; Shelton, 1965).

Seventy percent of four-year-old children are able to associate environmental sounds with the things or events which make the sound

(Moog, 1968/1976). They are also able to identify instrumental sounds to which they have been exposed (Moog, 1968/1976).

Children have developed most of their pitch range between the ages of two and six (Jersild and Bienstock, 1934) . Tonal discrim­ ination, accuracy of tonal reproduction,and singing ability increase with training (Hissen, 1933; Jersild and Bienstock, 1931, 1934; 59

Updegraff, Heiliger, and Learned, 1938; Smith, 1963). Characteristics of young children’s singing include descending lines, particularly, descending thirds, and are apparently easier for them to sing (Drexler,

1938; Moorhead and Pond, 1941).

Approximately eighty-five percent of four-year-old children are able to sing a song in tune (Moog, 1968/1976). Another study found this to be the case with second-grade children (Petzold, 1969).

Singing in tune is related to pitch perception (Zwissler, 1971).

Children are better able to determine pitch difference and direction within the normal singing range (Williams, 1975, 1977; Zwissler, 1971).

The young child’s average vocal range is lower than that of the typical songs found in most teacher's manuals (Drexler, 1938; Hattwick, 1933;

Jersild and Bienstock, 1931; Moorhead and Pond, 1941; Wilson as reviewed in Swanson, 1973).

There is a relationship between the child's ability to match pitch and his ability to keep time (Bienstock and Jersild, 1935).

Children have more difficulty matching beat to slower tempi (Petzold,

1969; Bienstock and Jersild, 1935; Frega, 1979; Piper and Shoemaker,

1973). Children's ability to keep accurate time to music improves greatly between the ages of two and five (Bienstock and Jersild, 1935) or three and six (Williams, 1932a). One child in ten in the three- to four-year-old age group could match beat but most could distinguish fast and slow (Moog, 1968/1976).

Children between the ages of twenty-two months through kinder­ garten age and older respond more to stimulative than to sedative music (Simons, 1964; Alford, 1966; Zimny and Wiedenfeller, 1962). 60

Rhythm tasks involving large muscle movement are difficult for

three- and four-year-old children. Chanting was found to be the

easiest means for children to reproduce rhythm patterns followed by

clapping and using rhythm sticks (Frega, 1979; Rainbow and Owen,

1979).

The earliest concepts to develop are beat, tempo, and dynamics

(Greenberg, 1972). The developmental sequence for musical discrimina­

tion begins with loudness, followed by pitch, rhythm, and harmony

(Zimmerman, 1971). Loudness is the first and most completely developed

concept and is more highly developed than pitch even at the fourth

grade level (Andrews and Diehl, 1967). First-grade children have been

found capable of discriminating harmony (Hair, 1973). Preschool

children can learn to discriminate timbre (Fullard, 1967; Loucks,

1974). Four-year-old children have been taught exact melodic repeti­

tion and half-step intervals (letter, 1978), pitch register, melodic

contour, interval size (Scott, 1979), pitch (high-low), duration

(fast and slow), and loudness (Romanek, 1974).

Tasks which kindergarten children were capable of performing prior to formal music instruction include being able (1) to distinguish between same and different phrases, (2) to identify ascending and descending melodic lines, (3) to distinguish between accompanied and unaccompanied music, (4) to distinguish between fast and slow pulse, and (5) to distinguish between loud and soft dynamic levels (Piper and

Shoemaker, 1973) . Four-year-old children are supposedly able to dis­ criminate high and low, loud and soft, and long and short (Andress

et al., 1973). There are problems concerning lack of terminology or confusions in the use of terms (Andrews and Diehl, 1967; Duell, 1965 as reported in

Duell and Anderson, 1967; Hattwick, 1932, 1935; Hitchcock, 1942; Jeffrey,

1958; King, 1972; Laverty, 1969; McGinnis, 1928; Pflederer and Sechrest,

1968a, 1968b; Van Zee, 1974), particularly high and low (Van Zee, 1974).

Fifty percent of four-year-old children were able to use "going up" and

"going down" in a visual sense but only one in ten was able to do so auditorially (Hattwick, 1935) . There is a confusion of the three terms

"high," "loud," and "fast" and the terms "low," "soft," and "slow"

(Andrews and Diehl, 1967). Young children’s perceptions are synethetic

(Andress et al., 1973). Hitchcock (1942) found high and low to be least successfully used by young children in referring to pitch change, less successful than light and heavy for three-year-olds and light- dark for four-year-olds.

Andrews and Diehl (1967) proposed that the nonwritten Manipulative and Overt Measures they had developed as part of their Battery were a more feasible way of working with younger children than were the

Verbal and Listening written measures, A nonverbal response was often a better vehicle for children to demonstrate their conceptual under­ standing than was a verbal response (Hair, 1977; Webster, 1980; Van Zee,

1974). Visual aids were also helpful in children's ability to associ­ ate and discriminate high and low (Hitchcock, 1935; Williams, 1932), but this was in conjunction with training.

Since the majority of four-year-old children would, according to

Piaget's conceptual developmental theories, still be operating at the preoperational level, these children may expected to be "perception bound," and likely to fixate on a particular aspect of a musical listen­

ing experience or any incoming stimuli. They would be expected to

demonstrate centration. Pflederer and Sechrest (1968b) in their study

with five through thirteen-year-old children, found centering on tone

color interfering with conservation. Jetter (1978) found melody to be

the dominating factor with four-year old children. Taebel (1974) found

that kindergarten children tend to fixate on volume. Laverty (1969)

and Andrews and Diehl (1967), in their studies involving children in

grades three through seven, concluded loudness level may be one of the

earliest developing concepts. Romanek (1974) found the concept of

loudness to be easily acquired but pitch discimination and duration

apparently more difficult for preschool children.

In these studies there were many references to terminology prob­

lems and continued findings that children seem to understand concepts,

however marginally, but are unable to express them. Therefore, this

study proposes to measure music concepts in ways which will allow the

conceptual understanding, if it is present, to be made evident, to discover terms children may use more naturally in referring to these

concepts, to discover the existence of common descriptive terms, and to determine whether the same terminology confusions surface once again.

The experimental procedures of the present study were completed in

1977. The studies reviewed in this chapter include studies as recent as 1981. Some of the findings in studies done both before and since

1977 are like some of the findings in this study. However, no other

study was alike in all aspects and even if that were the case, repli­ cation is a necessary and important part of research. Chapter III

PROCEDURES

According to conclusions reached by Zimmerman (1971), there is a developmental sequence to the acquisition of abilities involved in musical discrimination. The first discrimination to develop is the ability to distinguish loud and soft, next comes pitch, rhythm and lastly, harmony or simultaneous sounds.

In the initial stages of this study, the following concepts were included: fast-slow, legato-staccato, loud-soft, high-low, sound source, media or timbre, and texture. Because loud and soft seemed to be completely accessible and usable concepts for children of this age, dynamics was not pursued in this study. The high-low concepts have been explored with varying degrees of confusion and lack of success and were therefore a challenge. The Taebel (1974) study was the only one the author found in which legato-staccato concepts had been explored with young children. The author decided to include this set of con­ cepts even though the terminology almost certainly would be unfamiliar to the children. The ideas, however, seemed accessible, perceivable, and understandable for young children. The number of concepts was reduced further to allow for a more concentrated investigation and was finally limited to assessing what the four-year-old child has assimilated as

63 64 concepts of high-low, fast-slow, and legato-staccato. With fast-slow, legato-staccato, and high-low were also included faster and slower and higher and lower.

Validation Procedures

The next procedure was to generate as many kinds of activities for each of the selected concepts as possible. Response activities and listening items were developed and revised during the course of two pilot studies. Prior to the first pilot study, activities and responses were validated by six persons whose expertise included music as well as a knowledge of preschool children. Two were preschool teachers with an interest in music and some experience in doing musical activities with preschool children, one was a public school music specialist, one an experienced professor of elementary music education at The Ohio State University, one a Ph.D. candidate in music education with a great deal of public school music experience, and one was a

Ph.D. candidate in music theory. These individuals were asked to read each item and rate it according to the following:

1. child would relate-react-respond to this item

2. questionable if child could respond to this item

3. child unlikely to respond to this item - confusing

The listening items were validated by four musicians, one, chairman of music education at The Ohio State University, one, an associate pro­ fessor of music education at Otterbein College, one a Ph.D. candidate in music education at Ohio State (these last two persons teach ele­ mentary music education courses at the college level) and the fourth was a Ph.D. candidate in music theory at Ohio State. A tape of listen­ ing examples was put together by the experimenter after much listening for examples fitting each of the concept categories, Some suggestions made by fellow music graduate students, and looking at other listening test examples. The tape was not organized in any way. The validators were asked to decide the category - fast-slow, legato-staccato, high- low - that each example was chosen to represent. This was done at one sitting with three of the validators. Afterwards, responses were com­ pared and discussed and some examples replayed. Where more than one concept seemed prominent or any other confusions seemed apparent to this group, the examples was eliminated. The response items and selection of listening examples went through two revisions in conjunc­ tion with two pilot studies before beginning the main study. Items which were too long, nonresponsive activities, and confusing items were changed or eliminated.

Pilot Study I

The initial pilot study was conducted with children from a Univer­ sity sponsored child care program. A description of the sessions with the children, the purpose of the study, and parental permission forms were sent to parents of those children who were four years old to four years ten months old during the time scheduled for this pilot study

(see Appendix A). From five to ten children participated in the three subtests from a possible group of three boys and seven girls. A description of each subtest in the first pilot study follows. The musical examples were all on tape and the sessions were taped in order to preserve as much as possible of the responses for later study. Pilot Test 1A (Fast-Slow)

In this first fast-slow session, the children were asked to listen to the musical example, then move to the music, and finally describe their movement and thus describe the music. Each musical example was repeated so the children would have sufficient opportunity to move to the music. There were five musical examples presented in this fashion

(see Table 1). Then, to demonstrate their understanding of the terms

"fast"and "slow" and "faster" and "slower," the children were next asked to play something slow on a xylophone and then to play slower.

Table 1. Musical Examples for Pilot Test IA (Fast-Slow)

Duration Example Fast-Slow (in Seconds)

1. Kabalevsky: Comedian's Galop Fast 20 2. Humperdinck: Hansel and Gretel, "Prayer" Slow 54 3. Stravinsky: Firebird, "Berceuse" Slow 34 4. Rossini: William Tell Overture Fast 22.5 5. Moussorgsky-Ravel: Pictures at an Exhibition, "Great Gate" Slow 37.5 (8) 6. Offenbach: Gaite Parisienne, "Cancan" Fast 16.5 (11) 7. Herold: Zampa Overture Fast 13.5 (12) 8. Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras No. 2, "The Little Train of the Caipira" Acc. 32.5 (13) 9. Smetana: The Bartered Bride, "Polka" Acc. 14 (14) 10. Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras No, 2, "The Little Train of the Rail. 21 Caipira" 67

PILOT TEST IA (FAST-SLOW) Item Response Recorded Examples 1.-5. We're going to listen to some music. Listen to how the music moves and try and move the way the music is moving. Can you tell me how you moved? Can you tell me about the speed of your moving? (If no response - Did you move fast or slow?) Can you tell me how the music was moving? (If no response - Was it moving fast or slow?)

2.

3.

4.

5.

6. Can you play something slow on this instrument (xylophone) for me?

7. Can you play something even slower than what you just played?

8. We're going to listen to- some more music. See if you can move the way this music is moving. Can you tell me how you moved? etc.

9. Can you play something fast on this instrument for me?

10. Can you play something even faster than what you just played?

11.-14. Same as 1-5

12.

13.

14. 68

There was another recorded musical example and then they were asked to

play something fast and then faster on the xylophone. The requested

fast and slow playing on the xylophone followed immediately after

recorded musical examples which were fast and slow respectively. The

session concluded with four more recorded examples. The final three musical examples involved changes in tempo, two accelerando and one

rallentando, to determine whether or not these changes in tempo would

be perceived.

Results and Discussion of Pilot Test IA (Fast-Slow)

Ten children participated in this first session. All of the

children used "fast" and "slow" with varying degrees of accuracy in

connection with the musical examples. As can be seen in Table 2, of

these ten children, two responded correctly to seven of the ten musi­

cal examples, three correctly answered six of the ten, one to five, two to four, one to three, and one to two. One child commented upon both the tempo and dynamic level of the examples. Six children cor­ rectly used movement in conjunction with their verbal response for at least one of the musical examples, four fairly consistently. Two children at one point moved appropriately but answered incorrectly and one child used movement rather than a verbal response for most of the examples. The number correct for each musical example is shown in Table 3. Examples 8 and 9 were accelerando and 10, rallentando; for the most, responses to these examples were poor.

The children seemed to listen either just to the beginning and answered to that impression or just to the end of the example and answered to that impression. 69

Table 2. Children's Scores, Pilot Test IA

Number of Number Children Correct

2 7 3 6 1 5 2 4 1 3 1 2

Table 3. Results of Pilot Test IA

Number Example Correct

1 6 2 6 3 7 4 9 5 5 6 8 7 8 8 1 9 1 10 1

Three children responded to at least one of these last three musical examples with an appropriate answer. Two children described example 8 as moving slow and fast, one in the right order. One child moved both fast and slow, but in the wrong order. Three 70

children described the last example as moving fast and slow, one in the

right order. For this example also, one child moved both fast and slow, but in the wrong order.

Some of the incorrect responses may have been due to centration.

Children may have found another aspect of the music more dominant in

their perceptual framework and responded accordingly. Though compet­

ing chracteristics were eliminated as much as possible from the

examples chosen and the dominant characteristics were determined and validated to be the one it was chosen to exemplify, there is always more than one element present at a time in any musical example. In these examples, number 8, Little Train, was loud and high as well as fast; example 9, Bartered Bride Polka, was loud, fast, and high; and example 10, Little Train, was slow, soft, and high.

Once a child had given a response, questioning his response might very well lead to his changing it, if only to please the experimenter.

Interpretation of the responses was difficult without knowing what the child was hearing.

Movement to the musical examples was also difficult to interpret.

Seven of the ten children moved in some way in responding to at least part of the session. Three children did not move at all but did respond verbally. Some of the movement responses did not match the verbal descriptions of the response. One child answered correctly to one of the examples but moved in the opposite or at an inappropriate tempo while another child moved appropriately and answered incor­ rectly. One child moved his hands as if conducting in time to a few of the musical examples. Although a movement response was not always 71 noted, the children's verbal responses (descriptions and explanations

of their movement and that of the musical examples) were noted.

This session was the first indication to the experimenter of the

difficulty involved in eliciting response, physical or verbal, to an opened-ended question. With nearly all the children it became neces­

sary to lead them with, "Were you moving fast or slow?" or, "How was

the music moving, fast or slow?" in order to test their concept at

all. This meant that not many responses were being gleaned from the children. Results of this session were:

1. The session was too long for the children as can be noted from

the number of examples. The session ran from twelve to fifteen

minutes without repeated musical examples. The repetitions were

eliminated during the session because a child either did or did

not wish to move to the music and this was evident immediately,

and whether or not he did move, repeating the example did not

seem to change the response and distracted by adding length after

his decision had been made.

2. The number of examples distracted from the actual equalized pres­

entation of each item; interest and perhaps clarity diminished,

especially for those whose natural attention span may have been

very short.

3. Other factors affected the first pilot test as a whole. These

factors included:

a. the difficulty of working within the complicated activity

schedules of several classrooms 72

b. the inconvenience of the room where the testing was to be done,

requiring trips up and down several flights of stairs in order

to borrow and return each child

c. the physical characteristics of the room used for the testing

which was poorly lighted and uncomfortably cool. In addition,

just prior to the time when these sessions were to begin and

without the experimenter being warned, this room was turned

into a storage area. It was two thirds filled with toys,

chairs, and odds and ends, and as a result was both uncom­

fortable and distracting to the children.

Pilot Test IA pointed up the need to shorten the test. It became clear that ten to fifteen minutes for each session should be maximum.

This pilot test also further strengthened the determination to be very careful to avoid distractions of any kind. Listening examples needed to be reduced in number and the repetition eliminated.

It became apparent from the first pilot sessions that something other than tempo was affecting children's answers and the manner of their playing when asked to play fast and slow. The confusion with loud- fast, and soft-slow was considered and, as much as possible, equalized if not completely eliminated from the musical examples in the next sifting for Pilot Test IIA. The child's demonstration of fast and slow by playing an instrument was kept as well as the faster and slower questions to establish the fast-loud, slow-soft association (predelec­ tion) and confusion. 73

Pilot Test IB (Legato-Staccato)

The second session with the children dealt with legato-staccato.

This session began with the child demonstrating various activities or

movements which are actually legato or staccato in character. Examples:

"Show me how you skate."; "Show me how you hop." There are nine items

of this nature. This was followed by four recorded musical examples

where the child was asked to listen and then choose one of the move­

ments that felt like or moved like the music. See Table 4 for a list

of musical examples. The child then experienced and observed various

objects and materials sensually which could be associated with the

staccato and legato concepts. There were initially six such items

including running a scarf and a knotted satin rope belt through the

child’s hands, running hands up and down their lap, making a similar

motion with their hand on the table top, drawing spirals with paper

and pencil (as demonstrated by the experimenter) and making dots with

pencil on paper. The fifth and sixth items involved observing two

wristwatches, one with a continuous sweep second hand and one with the

quartz descrete second hand movement. These last two wristwatch items

were never tested.

In the four experiential items which were used, the child was

asked each time to describe the experience, "How does it feel to move

like that?" This was asked in an attempt to generate words such as

'femootH1and "bumpy." The session ended with four listening examples. The

child was asked to listen and then choose some movement he had done or

object he had worked with that moved in the same way or felt like the 74 music. The entire session ran approximately twelve minutes. The musical examples ran from eight to forty-three seconds in length.

Table 4. Musical Examples for Pilot Test IB (Legato-Staccato)

Legato- Duration Example Staccato (in seconds)

(10) 1. Design ii’i Music (Bowmar), Bell Rondo, "Theme A" Staccato 8 (11) 2. Design in Music (Bowmar), Bell Rondo, "Theme C" Legato 18.5 (12) 3. Design in Music (Bowmar), Theme and Variations, "Theme" Legato 21 (13) 4. Design in Music (Bowmar), Theme and Variations, "Second Variation" Staccato 10 (20) 5. Saint-Saens: Carnival of the Animals, "The Swan" Legato 43 (21) 6. Tchaikovsky: Andante Cantabile Legato 16 (22) 7. Shostakovich: The Age of Gold, "Polka" Staccato 18.5 (23) 8. Smetana: The Moldau Legato 27.5

PILOT TEST IB (LEGATO-STACCATO)

Item Response 1. Show me how you skate.

2. Show me how you slide.

3. Show me how you swing.

4. Show me how a bird flies

5. Show me how you march.

6. Show me how you jump.

7. Show me how you hop.

8. Show me how you can be a bouncing ball. 75

Item Response 9. Show me how you can be a rabbit. how a bunny hops.

Recorded Examples

10-13. Listen to this music; then choose one of the movements you did for me that moves the way the music moves and do that movement.

11.

12.

13.

14. Hold this scarf in your fist and move your hand down the scarf like this. How does it feel? Anything else? What other words would describe how it feels?

15. Hold this rope (satin rope with knots in it) in your fist and move your hand down the rope like this. How does it feel? Anything else? What other words could you use to describe it?

16. Move your fingers like this (run hands up and down on lap and on table top and spiraling, swirling lines with pencil on paper). How does it feel to move like that? What other words could you use to describe how it feels?

17. Make marks like this with this pencil (dots on paper with pencil). How did that(kind of motion) feel? What words could you use to describe how it feels?

18. Look at this watch (wristwatch). Look at the moving part. Tell me how it is moving? How else could you describe it?

19. Now look at this watch (wristwatch). Look at the moving part. Tell me how this one is moving? How else could you describe it?

20-23. Listen to this music; then choose something here that feels or moves the way the music feels or moves.

21.

22.

23. 76

Results and Discussion of Pilot Test IB (Legato-Staccato)

Six children participated in this session. Two children responded correctly (using appropriate associations) to seven of the eight musi­ cal examples, two children correctly answered four of the eight; one, three of eight; and one, two of eight (see Table 5). For the number of students correctly responding to each musical example see Table 6.

Table 5. Children's Scores, Pilot Test IB

Number of Number Children Correct

2 7 2 4 1 3 1 2

Table 6. Results of Pilot Test IB

Number Example Correct

1 3 2 4 3 3 4 5 5 5 6 1 7 3 8 3 77

In this first pilot of B the activities used to bring forth terms to describe legato and staccato were various movements and tactile sensations. The tactile and experiential items with the scarf, rope, paper, and pencil produced the terms "soft," "smooth," "lumpy," "bumpy,"

"hard," and the literal "like cloth.” One of the two children who responded correctly to seven of the eight musical examples responded to the tactile experience with "smooth" and "bumpy" and used these terms correctly with the musical examples. One other child also responded to the tactile experiences with "bumpy." Two children used the scarf sensation without a description in relating to a musical example. The most common responses to the tactile experiences were

"soft" and "hard." One confusion resulted from using a satin rope belt tied in knots rather than an actual rope tied in knots, and this was responded to with "soft" or "soft" and "hard" rather than "bumpy."

The scarf and the swirling pencil movements were called "soft" and the dotting movement with the pencil, "hard."

Movement was used more often successfully than the tactile experiences. "Hopping," "bunny hopping," "jumping," "skating," and

"sliding" were the terms which were used successfully.

The session ran approximately ten to fifteen minutes. Though the time actually involved in the session was not excessive, the num­ ber of items, movement, experiential, and musical, seemed excessive to the experimenter. The movement associations still seemed an appropriate means of expressing or indicating the concepts of legato and staccato in the music. In fact, they were more likely to directly translate to the movement in the music than the tactile experiences. 78

But, there were too many examples of types of movement, apparently

confusing to the children.

Another problem noted by this time was that running one reel to

reel tape recorder for musical examples while trying also to run a

cassette to record each session was too complicated for the experi­ menter as well as distracting to the children. Taping all directions had been considered but set aside as it was felt that rapport and some flexibility would be sacrificed. Also, the stopping and starting necessary for the large number of activity demonstrations, by both the experimenter and the children in responding, made it impractical.

Because of the small number of subjects, the overall outcome was less successful and clear than was expected.

Pilot Test IC (High-Low)

The third session dealt with high-low (also getting higher and getting lower). This session began with sound experimentation and the child's description of those sounds. In the first pilot study this session was a tentative, broadbased exploration to determine to which sounds or sound producers the children could best relate. There were nine sets or pairs of sounds and one single sound including: temple blocks, harmonica (played at each end), a balloon with air escaping from the stretched neck, three sets of organ pipes, finger cymbals and gong, a pair of resonator bells, two Indian brass bells, and the outside strings on the autoharp. This direct and immediate experience with sounds was followed by recorded paired sounds or tunes, for example, a tune played in a high and a low register of the piano, a teakettle whistling and a timer buzzing, the sound of an electric can

opener and a car engine idling, a tune played high on a soprano

recorder and then low on a tenor recorder. The child was to listen and

describe the sounds. The child was then asked to pick out things that

made high sounds, then things that made low sounds out of the pre­

viously experienced and described items. It was hoped that the

previous descriptions of sounds would have produced words of the child's

own initiation and understanding for the terms "high" and "low" which

the experimenter could use in asking them to sort what they had heard

or experienced thus far in this session. Next, the child was requested

to make a high and a low sound with his voice. This was followed with

describing and playing two pitches on resonator bells. This item was

listed three times on the test and response sheet but was done only

once with four of the five children participating in this session.

The child was then asked to play a tone on the resonator bells and

then a higher tone, then any tone again and then a lower tone. The

story of "The Three Bears" was used next to get the child to use his

voice as papa, mama, and baby bear and then describe the dramatic

voices he used. This was followed by two experiences with glissando

on slide whistle and resonator bells with requests for description

of the sounds. The last portion of the session involved listening to

musical examples and describing the examples. There were twelve

short musical examples (see Table 7). They ranged in length from five

and a half to forty-six and a half seconds. The session ran approxi­ mately thirty-five minutes per student. 80

Table 7. Musical Examples for Pilot Test IC (High-Low, Higher-Lower)

Duration Example High-Low (in seconds)

(28) 1. Stravinsky: Petrushka (Entry, Part II) High 17 (29) 2. Saint-Saens: Carnival of the Animals, "Elephants" Low 19.5 (30) 3. Haydn: Lirenkonzert High 25 (31) 4. Grieg: Morning Mood High 10 (32) 5. Dukas: The Sorcerer's Apprentice Low 16.5 (33) 6. Liadov: Musical Snuff Box High 11.5 (34) 7. Moussorgsky-Ravel: Pictures at an Exhibition. "Catacombs" - "Promenade" Low 10 (35) 8. Moussorgsky-Ravel: Pictures at an Exhibition, "Bydlo" Low 46.5 (36) 9. Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue Higher 5.5 (37) 10. Grofe: Piano Concerto Lower 6.5 (38) 11. Grofe: Piano Concerto Higher 6 (39) 12. Grofe: Grand Canyon Suite, "On the Trail" Higher 14.5

PILOT TEST C (HIGH-LOW) Item Response

1-10. Listen to these sounds. (temple blocks) You play them. Tell me about the sounds. What other words would describe these sounds?

2. (harmonica)

3. (balloon)

4. (organ pipes)

5. (organ pipes)

6. (organ pipes)

7. (finger cymbals and gong) 81

Item______Response 8. (resonator bells)

9. (Indian brass bells)

10. (autoharp)

Recorded Examples

11. Listen to these tunes. (Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, low then high on piano) Do you know what they were played on? Tell me about the tunes. Can you tell me anything else about the tunes?

12. Listen to these sounds. (teakettle and timer) Tell me about these sounds. What other words could you use to describe these sounds?

13. Listen to these sounds. (can opener and car engine) Tell me about these sounds. What other words could you use to describe these sounds?

14. Listen to these tunes. (Mary Had a Little Lamb, low then high on recorder) Tell me about the tunes. Can you tell me anything else about the tunes? Do you know what they were played on?

15. Pick out some things that make high sounds.

16. Pick out some things that make low sounds.

17. Can you make a high sound with your voice?

18. Can you make a low sound with your voice?

Xylophone or Resonator Bells

19. I'm going to play two tones for you. (Experimenter plays on resonator bells, high and low) Here's one and here's one. What can you tell me about those two sounds? Is one of them higher? Which one is higher?

20. Tell me about these two sounds. What do you mean? Can you tell me more? Now you play them.

21. Tell me about these two sounds. What do you mean? Can you tell me more? Now you play them.

22. Play one tone. Now play a higher tone. 82

Item Response Recorded Examples 23. Play a tone. Now play a lower tone than that.

24. Do you know the story of "The Three Bears?" There's a mama bear, a papa bear, a baby bear, and Goldilocks. Remember the part about "Who's been sitting in my chair?"; "Who's been eating my porridge?"; and "Who's been sleeping in my bed?" Say, "Who's been eating my porridge?" like the baby bear. What kind of voice does the baby bear have?

25. Say, "Who's been eating my porridge?" like the mama bear. What kind of voice does the mama bear have?

26. Say, "Who's been eating my porridge?" like the papa bear. What kind of voice does the papa bear have?

27. What can you tell me about these sounds? (glissando on glock or resonator bells and slide whistle).

28-39. Listen to this music. Tell me about how the music sounded. What else can you tell me about it?

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

38.

39. 83

Results and Discussions of Pilot Test IC (High-Low)

Five children participated in these pilot sessions. There were twelve musical examples in all. A list of musical examples appears in Table 7. One child got all but one of the musical examples cor­ rect and had all the other examples and experiences correct once the terms "high" and "low" were introduced by the experimenter. Another child responded to all items and musical examples in terms of "noisy" and "quiet." The other three children also responded in terms of

"loud" and "soft," sometimes both in the same example. This was demonstrated in one example when the loudness level was purposefully changed by the experimenter. One child referred to two of the high musical examples in terms of a baby or a girl singing. The same child seemed to make an appropriate low association to papa bear's voice for a low musical example, although she described it as "like papa bear, real loud," and when the experimenter turned down the loudness level of the example, she said it now sounded like baby bear. Sometimes the response was in terms of explicit sound effects, for instance, "That sounds like a piano or a bell." For the number of correct responses to each musicial example see Table 8.

From the very first child, it became apparent that mixups in language, expectations, or biases were overriding the aspects of the stimuli which were intended to be the dominant aspects. It was found that size— of bars, organ pipes, bells— influenced the responses to such an extent that this problem needed to be worked out in some fashion where size would not be a variable. Large (long, tall) instru­ ments made big, high, and sometimes, loud-noisy sounds. Small or 84

Table 8. Results of Pilot Test IC

Number Example Correct

28 1 29 2 30 2 31 1 32 2 33 2 34 3 35 2 36 2 37 2 38 2 39 2 shorter instruments made low, soft, or quiet sounds. With the "Three

Bears" story, the size (height) of the characters determined the highness or lowness of voice. Responses to the quality of baby bear's voice were "littlest," "softest," "quiet," and "low"; to mama bear, less clearly, "high," "loud," "soft," and "medium"; and to papa bear,

"loud" and "high."

Several of the children seemed more attunded to dynamic level of the sound, instrument or musical example, than to any other character­ istic, and they responded in terms of their perception of the loudness or softness of the instrument. This was not completely consistent across all answers for a single child, but it occurred often enough with just the ifive children to show a real problem in using sound sources connected with size. The solution worked out with and built 85 by the electronics music laboratory at The Ohio State University, ws a ton-generating machine with six separate control knobs and correspond­ ing switches. Tones could be pre-set and then produced by flipping the switch or with a switch in the on position, a single sound could be varied in a sliding glissando manner by turning the corresponding knob.

This made it possible and very simple for the experimenter or child to produce and compare sounds.

One child's reaction to the glissando experience on resonator bells was particularly interesting. This child perceived "higher" and

"lower" in terms of her perspective in relationship to the bells. As distance increased between herself and the mallet traveling away from her, she saw this as "higher." "Lower" was her interpretation as the mallet approached her. Here again, the overriding characteristic of the experience was a sense of relative size, this time in terms of distance. As the activity continued, she changed in her response to this experience by calling everything "down" or "lower." However, it seemed that she now was perceiving the mallet in relation to the sur­ face of the instrument, and as the mallet approached either end, the distance became shorter, smaller, lower. She was probably watching the mallet as it moved and fixating on that end of the instrument. The increasing length of the slide whistle was also perceived as higher

(longer) and when it slid up, lower (shorter). This only happened with one child and as instruments were not used from this point on, this particularly interesting phenomenon was not examined further. Session

IC was particularly long, running approximately thirty-five minutes. 86

Pilot Study II

Pilot Test IIA (Fast-Slow)

The second pilot test series was done with children at a Columbus area Montessori preschool. Seven children participated in the first session and six in the following two sessions.

It was decided that the second pilot test of the concepts fast- slow would begin with a follow the leader episode where the experi­ menter would first walk fast and the child imitate; the child would be questioned about the activity in order to try and get him to verbalize a term. This was followed with slow walking to serve as a comparison and thereby help the child verbalize comparative terms. This activity was followed with a new procedure wherein pictures of things that are usually associated with fast and slow or which were obviously moving fast or slow were shown to the child and he was to identify the pic­ ture or action as fast or slow. The pictures included: a horse running, a football player running, a fire engine moving fast, a turtle, an elephant dancing, a snail, a man creeping up stairs, a baby swinging in a cradle, and a woman holding a baby in a rocking chair. As the children described the pictures and movement, the experimenter placed the pictures into two groups from which the children could later choose the ones they felt suited the musical examples. Before the examples, however, was a section of playing on resonator bells where the child was asked to play fast, faster, slow, slower, loud, loud and slow, soft, and soft and fast. This was an attempt to follow up the already mentioned association between fast 87

PILOT TEST IIA (FAST-SLOW)

Item______Response 1. I would like you to play follow the leader with me. You copy what I do. OK? (Walk very fast) How were we walking? Don't show me but just tell me.

2. Now follow me again. (Walk very slowly) This time how were we walking? I have some pictures to show you. What is this a picture of? How is the ______moving?

3. Play fast on these bells (resonator bells) for me.

4. Now see if you can play faster.

5. Now play slow.

6. See if you can play slower.

7. Play something loud.

8. Can you play loud and slow?

9. Can you play something soft?

10. Can you play soft and fast?

11. I have some music recorded on this tape recorder. I'm going to play it for you and you tell me about it.

12. Here is the first one. Tell me about that music. How did it move or make you feel like moving? Is there a picture that shows how the music wasmoving?

13. Here is another. How does this music move?

14. Here is the third. How does this music move?

15. And here is the fourth. How does this music move?

16. Here is the last. How does this music move? 88

and loud, and slow and soft. This was followed by five musical

examples (see Table 9). The children were asked to tell how the music

moved and they did this in terms of the pictures that had been dis­

cussed.

Table 9. Musical Examples for Pilot Test IIA (Fast-Slow)

Duration Example Fast-Slow (in seconds)

1. Stravinsky: Firebird, "Berceuse" Slow 56 2. Rossini: William Tell Overture Fast 11 3. Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 4, Third Movement "Scherzo" Fast 39.5 4. Moussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition, "Great Gate" Slow 38 5. Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras No. 2, Slowing "The Little Train of the Caipira" down 21

Results and Discussion of Pilot Test IIA (Fast-Slow)

Two children of the seven responded correctly to all five musical

examples. Of the other five children, three gave correct responses to four of the five examples and two children responded correctly to three of the five musical examples. These last two children responded to the rallentando example with "slow," which, if their last perception were considered, would have been correct. Four of those five children responded incorrectly to example three. Though the tempo of the third example was nearly identical to the William Tell example, it sounds less "driven."

Since the examples were in the order, slow, fast, fast, slow, slower, the children may have expected alternates after the first two 89 examples and answered incorrectly for this reason. All of the seven

children responded correctly to the last - getting slower example

(see Table 10 below).

Table 10. Results of Pilot Test IIA

Number Example Correct

1 5 2 5 3 3 4 7 5 5

In items 3 through 10 where the children were asked to play in various combinations of fast and slow with loud and soft, the com­ bination most difficult to produce seemed to be loud and slow. Slow usually brought the response of soft and fast the response of loud.

Also, it appeared that asking a child to play fast usually brought the fastest he could manage to play. As this was followed by a re­ quest for faster, the result was usually louder.

The walking activity produced in all cases the terms "fast" and

"slow." The pictures also were all identified and in nearly all cases identified as examples of fast or slow movement. All seven children used the pictures as well as the terms "fast" and "slow," and for the last example, "slow," "fast to slow," "slowing down," or "coming into the station" to describe the Little Train.

This session was an improvement over IA. The directions were less amorphous for the child. By determining the words (concepts) 90

that they were to be concerned with at the outset of the session, they

were better prepared to follow and respond to the remaining items.

The pictures appeared to be a reinforcement of the fast-slow concepts

and for most of the children, could and did serve as mental images or

associations in describing the musical examples.

The facilities for this pilot test were much improved over the

first pilot series. The children and the testing area were on one

floor and very convenient. The testing room was quiet and secluded.

There were no distracting materials and there was sufficient room for movement and to spread out pictures. Though a tape recorder was used

for the musical examples, there was no attempt made to tape these

sessions. The experimenter felt this first session went very well.

Pilot Test IIB (Legato-Staccato)

In the second pilot of the legato-staccato subtest, it was felt that cutting down the options to two motions that children of this age would be familiar with (and thereby forcing a choice) would pro­ vide a better, less confused response. This was decided upon in spite of the original intention to keep all channels and possible associations open for the children to use by way of response to the primary concept under consideration at the time. There was some flexibility left in that they could choose one of the two movements— skating or hopping— that they thought fit the music better or some other movement if they wished. 91

PILOT TEST IIB (LEGATO-STACCATO)

Item______Response 1. We're going to play a game with these puppets. I'll start and then you can play. hot— u p - soft— quiet— smooth— in— under—

2. Now we're going to move around. You show me how you skate. Very nice.

3. Now show me how you hop. Good.

4. Listen to this music and choose one of the movements— skating or hopping, that fits the music. If some other movement is better— you may do that.

5. Here is another piece of music. Which movement fits this music?

6. Listen again and tell me which movement fits best.

7. Slide your hand down the bannister and tell me how it feels. 7a. Bannister 7b. Bannister Rail

8. Slide your hand along this (belt) and tell me how it feels. Can you think of anything else?

9. Slide your hand down this rope and tell me how it feels. How many differences can you find between the belt and the rope?

10. Move your fingers across this little ladder. How does it feel?

11. Move your fingers around the inside of this (distributor cap). How does it feel?

12. Now move your fingers around the inside of this ring. How does that feel? 92

Item Response 13. Now listen to this music and choose which of these is like the music?

14. Listen again and choose again which feeling is like the music?

15. Once more, listen and choose the feeling that is like the music. That was the last one.

In an attempt to generate word possibilities, a paired opposites game was placed at the beginning of the session. Using a puppet to initiate each word pair, the child was led to respond to obvious terms such as "hot" - "cold" . Terms included were: "hot" - _____ , "up"-____ ,

"soft" - _____, "quiet" - _____ , "smooth" - _____ , "in" - _____ , and

"under" - _____ . This was followed by the skating and hopping demon­ stration and the first three musical examples. The musical examples varied in length from eighteen to seventy-one seconds (see Table 11 below).

The first three examples were followed by a new paired experience.

As there was a stair bannister available at the nursery school where this pilot study was done, the experimenter had the children slide a hand along the bannister, then along the rails of the bannister, and then describe these sensations. Again a knotted rope was compared with a smooth satin rope. Other new materials to handle and then describe included a small toy plastic .ladder, the bumpy inside of a distributor cap, and a smooth plastic ring of about the same circum­ ference as the distributor cap. The session then ended with three more musical examples. 93

Table 11. Musical Examples For Pilot Test IIB (Legato-Staccato)

Legato- Duration Example Staccato (in seconds)

1. Design in Music (Bowmar) Bell Rondo, "Theme" Staccato 60.5 2. Design in Music (Bowmar) Bell Rondo, "Theme C" Legato 18 3. Design in Music (Bowmar), Theme and Variations, "Theme" Legato 35 4. Design in Music (Bowmar) Theme and Variations, "First Variation" Staccato 21

5. Saint-Saens: Carnival of the Animals, "The Swan" Legato 71 6. Humperdinck: Hansel and Gretel, "Prayer" Legato 55

Results and Discussion of Pilot Test IIB (Legato-Staccato)

As noted earlier, six children participated in this session. The

activity images worked well as did the tactile experiences in this

session. One child used "skating" and "hopping" throughout the session to describe tactile experiences as well as the musical examples; she was also correct throughout. One child used "smooth" or "skating" and

"bumpy" or "hard" in describing tactile experiences and musical

examples. This child had all but one correct. One child used "soft" and "rough" to describe tactile experiences but used the pictures to describe the musical examples. One more used "skating" and "hopping" to describe tactile experiences, another used "bumpy" or "hard” and

"soft" or "smooth" and one used "smooth" and "scratchy." Most of the tactile responses were correct. There were six musical examples in all, however, only one child heard all six; the other five children heard the first five examples.

The number of responses correct for each musical example are shown in

Table 12.

Table 12. Results of Pilot Test IIB

Number Example Correct

1 3 2 3 3 3 4 5 5 4 6a 1 aOnly heard by one child.

In the word opposites game, the word "soft" brought the response

"hard" or "not soft" and the word "smooth" - "hard" or "not smooth."

One child did not wish to do this puppet part and two children did not respond to every word. Though the puppets may have been fun for the children, they may have been more of a distraction than an aid and vehicle for bringing forth terms. The opposites session did not seem to prime the children for the responses they made to the manipu­ lation of the various materials used.

One of the problems of the first pilot test (IB) session was that not all of the children wished or could figure out what to do for the various movements the experimenter suggested they try. This second pilot of legato-staccato was an attempt to simplify and the simplifi­ cation was an improvement. Although the session may have been too 95 disjunct with changes in activity and apparent direction to the child, the results, in terms of correct responses to the musical examples, were quite successful.

Pilot Test IIC (High-Low)

In the second pilot of the high-low concepts, a new set of items was used in which che children were asked to identify and then describe recorded environmental sounds. In addition to the sounds, there were pictures of the various sound sources there for them to see and from which to choose. Sound effects included: an airplane (low), sleigh bells (high), steam shovel (low), pigs (low), sea lions (low), whistle (high), birds (high), and lion house at a zoo (low). The children were asked to describe the sound and then say how it was different from or like one of the other sounds. After these eight items, they were asked if the sounds they had described or the terms they used in naming objects or describing the sounds were high or low.

Then they were asked to group the animal and machine sounds as to which made high sounds and which low sounds. These last questions did seem to cover the same ground depending on the child's previous responses. Some of the children were asked, "What does 'high' mean?" and, "What does 'low' mean?" in addition to the questions as listed on the item-response sheet. This set of questions was followed by another major section where sixteen musical examples, including examples of various musical instruments played in their high and low registers, were played for the children. These examples ranged from eight to forty seconds in length (see Table 13 below). The children 96

PILOT TEST IIC (HIGH-LOW)

Item ______Response

1. We're going to hear some animal sounds on the tape recorder. See if you can find the pictures of what you hear. Sound Ident. Des. a. OK. Tell me about the sound. (light plane-low) a. b. Tell me about the sound. How is the sound different? (sleigh bells-high) b. c-h. Tell me about the sound. Is it like one of the others or is it different? How? (steam shovel-low) c. d. (pigs-low) d. e. (sea lions-low) e._ f. (whistle-high) f. g. (birds-high) g._ h. (lion house-low) h._

2. a. Does ______mean the same as high?

b. Does mean the same as low?

3. a. Which animals or machines made high sounds?

b. Which animals or machines made low sounds?

Listen to the musical instruments and pieces of music on the tape and tell me if they are high or low (______or ) .

a - (high) e. (low) ______b‘ (lo" ) £. (low-DB) ______c. (low-viola) . g. (low) ______d. (High-viola) h _ {hlgh) ______97

Item Response

i. (high) m. (gliss. up)

j. (high) ______n. (gliss. up and down) k. (low) ______o. (low) 1. (low) ______p. (low)

Play the harmonica at the red end and at the blue end.

What is the sound like at the red end? (low) ____

What is the sound like at the blue end? (high) ____

5. a. Let me show you the sounds the machine makes. We have to be careful not to touch the red light. You turn the knob and •move the switch like this. You try but be gentle.

I am going to make a sound with one of these switches and you try and match it. Find the same sound with your controls.

6. a. Now I'm going to play these switches. You turn around while I do and then you can find which ones I played.

b. Can you tell me if the sounds went from high to low or low to high? 98

Table 13. Musical Examples for Pilot Test IIC (High-Low)

High- Duration Example Low (in seconds)

(4a) 1. Beethoven: Leonore Overture No. 3 (violin) high 4 ( b) 2. Tchaikovsky: Marche Slave low 13 ( c) 3. viola low 10.5 ( d) 4. viola high 11.5 ( e) 5. Beethoven: Symphony No. 5, "Third Movement" low 7.5 ( f) 6. double bass low 9 ( g) 7. Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique, "March to the Gallows" low 11 ( h) 8. Bizet: Carmen Suite (flute) high 22 ( i) 9. Purcell: Trumpet Voluntary high 11.5 ( j) 10. Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker Suite, "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" high 8 ( k) 11. Saint-Saens: Carnival of the Animals, "Elephants" low 20 ( 1) 12. Moussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition, "Bydlo" low 40 ( m) 13. Grofe: Piano Concerto gliss,. up 4.5 ( n) 14. Smetana: Moldau gliss. up and down 17 ( o) 15. Moussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition, "Promenade" low 7.5 ( P) 16. Moussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition, "Catacombs" low 12.5

were asked to listen and then tell the experimenter if the sound was high or low. Some of these examples were taken from the RCA, Instru­ ments of the Orchestra (RCA Victor LE 6000) recording. One actual instrument was used at this point, a harmonioa. The ends of the harmonica were color-coded red (low) and blue (high) and the children were asked to describe the sound at each end. The last section of this pilot subtest involved items using the tone-generating machine developed by the electronic music laboratory at The Ohio State University. This machine was mentioned earlier in the discussion of Pilot Test IC (page 84). The children were allowed to experiment with the sound by turning one of the knobs and thus getting glissando pitch changes. They were then told to listen to one pitch produced with one of the switch settings and try to match the sound with another set of controls. In the last two items, the child listened to the experimenter play the pre-set switches from one side of the tone-generating machine to the other. The child was turned so he could not see which direction the switches were played. The child could then play the switches to discover which way they had been played. Then he was asked if the sound went from high to low or low to high. The switches had been pre-set and played from a low pitch to progressively higher pitches.

Results and Discussion of Pilot Test IIC (High-Low)

Six children participated in this session. The identification responses were substantially successful. Four of the six children categorized the sound effects as like or unlike the others in this set of items. One of these four and one of the remaining two children responded in their description of the sounds in terms of "loud" and

"soft" or "quiet." These children were apparently unable to attend to other than the dynamic level. The last child identified the sound but did not respond with descriptions. The second and third sections, where the high and low terms were brought in by the experimenter, ran together and were covered by the questions, "Which sounds were high

sounds?" and, "Which sounds were low sounds?" They responded to

"high" as "loud" or the larger, spatially-higher animals and objects

and to "low" as "soft" or the smaller, spatially-lower animals and

objects. The lion was "high" and the birds were both "high" and

"low." One child, in pursuing what "high" and "low" meant, used both

physical high ("tall" or "high up") and low ("short"), and low meaning

quiet and high meaning loud. Lions, the steam shovel and the airplane were high sounds. Seals, pigs, birds, and whistle were low sounds.

One child responded to "high" only with physical placement; airplane

and birds were high; everything else was low.

Subtest IIC attempted in its progression to have the children

identify and then to elicit from them word descriptions to the recorded

sound effects and then to compare the words derived from this exercise

to the terms "high" and "low." After these terms were established,

the purpose was to use either their own terms or "high" and "low" to describe the following recorded musical examples and electronic and harmonica sounds. The first section did not elicit responses other than identification and some association between examples, i.e., "It sounds like...." and in a couple of instances, reference to "loud" and

"soft." The children were bound up in and did not hear beyond literal identification. When the high and low terms were introduced, the associations were, as noted earlier, to "loud" and "soft" and to size or spatial placement of animals and objects. In the fourth section when the children were to respond to the listening examples, the animal and machine associations in many cases worked very well, but the children 101

^were very much affected by or responsive to the dynamic level of the * • « . « ■ n - n examples. The number correct for each exaiBplu is shown in Table 14.

As noted in Pilot Test IA in reference to the rallentando and

accelerando examples, children seem to listen to either just the

beginning or the end of a changing musical example. Example 13, the

Grofe, was of a glissando going up and ending in a high trill. One

child described this as a bell, high. Two children heard Example 14

as both high and low; it was of a glissando going up and down. These

responses were counted as correct. Some responses were literal, i.e.,

"It sounds like a piano (Grofe), or bells ("Dance of the Sugar Plum

Fairy"), or trumpet (Purcell Trumpet Voluntary)." Some answers

changed and were either negated or corrected when the loudness level

was changed by the experimenter. Some children's answers were mixed,

the animal or machine association would be correct but they would add

high or low apparently in reference to dynamic level and "lion-high-

loud" would be the result or "bird-low.”

The fact that loudness or dynamic level was affecting some of the

responses was established when, with several children, the experimenter

varied this control on the tape recorder. There seemed to be also an

association between spatial high and low and loudness, bringing in

mixed reports even from the same child and no doubt confusing that

child in his reporting with his own varied and changing uses of terms.

With the pitch matching item, using the tone generator, there was

more success with the higher pitch they were asked to match than the

lower one. Four children participated in this item. Two matched v v e l l 102

Table 14. Results of Pilot Test IIC

Number Example Correct

.-1 4 2 . ---- 5 .. 3 4 4 2 5 3 6 4 7 4 8 4 9 3 10 3 11 2 12 2 13 - 14 2 15 3 16 3 at the high end. One did well at both high and low ends and one did not match at all. One child did not get this far in the session and one did not attempt this item.

Four children participated in the harmonica item. Of these four, two used the bird and lion associations and were correct. The high end of the harmonica seemed to be perceived as quieter than the low end; two of the children called it "low" or "soft." The low end was

"high" or "medium" or they were unsure of the pitch range in answering.

This was not a particularly discriminating item. In the last item, the pitches were set up from low to high. Three of the six children found the right order of pitches and two of these children answered the high to low, low to high questions in terms of

"lion" and "bird" correctly.

.T.b±s high-.low subtest was still very long and still contained the most confusing mixed associations. Chapter IV

MAIN STUDY

The final study was.dope .with a total of thirty-eight four-year- old children, twenty-two male and sixteen female, from three separate preschools in the Columbus area. There were mixed socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds represented.

The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, a test of mental age, was given first to each child in the study. It was intended for use as a possible correlation with the other test results and it served as a way of meeting and allowing each child to become more comfortable with the tester before the actual musical sessions began. There were, in all, four sessions with each child, counting the Peabody Picture

Vocabulary Test as■ the first. The other sessions were the fast-slow session (Test A), the legato-staccato session (Test B), and the high- low session (Test C). All children were tested for a particular session before continuing on to the next session. Depending on the schedule of the experimenter, an interval of a day or two may have ensued between each session. The sessions ran from approximately ten to fifteen minutes for the Peabody test to approximately ten minutes for both the fast-slow and legato-staccato sessions and fifteen to twenty minutes for the high-low session. As tests were individual, there was some variance from one session to another.

104 105

Test A (Fast-Slow)

The items in this section of the test were rearranged and altered somewhat in order to get the children to more simply and quickly identify fast and slow and establish the use of these terms or some other terminology. The session began with the child being asked about comparative fast-slow settings on a metronome. The child was asked to describe how it was movitig. This was done in order to get the child to verbalize either the terms, "fast" and "slow” or his own terms.

The child was then shown pictures of a horse running and a turtle as well as several other pictures of "fast" and "slow" movement and asked how these animals or persons were moving (see Appendix B). The pictures were to illustrate fast and slow movement as well as give the child something besides the terms to use in identifying this movement in the musical examples. The child was asked to run fast and faster, walk slow and slower, and then to clap fast and faster and slow and slower. This, as noted in the second pilot, was done to explore further the association already noted between fast and loud and between slow and soft.

The session ended with four taped musical examples. The child was asked to tell how the music moved; he could use pictures or descriptions of movement in responding. The examples, tempi, and times involved are shown in Table 15. 106

TEST A (FAST-SLOW)

Item Response 1. I'm going to turn this metronome on. I'd like you to tell me about the way it moves. First .... and then ......

2. I have some pictures to show you. The first is of a horse. How is this horse moving? The next picture is of a turtle. How does the turtle move? (Other slow and fast pictures were shown at this time for them to identify.)

3. Now I'd like to see you run fast. Can you run faster than that?

4. Now walk slow. Can you walk slower?

5. Now I'd like you to clap fast. Can you clap faster?

6. Now see if you can clap slow. Can you clap slower?

7. I have some music recorded on this tape recorder for you to listen to. I'd like you to tell me or show me a picture of how the music moves.

First

Here's another.

Now a third

This last piece of music is supposed to be a train. You have to decide if the train is just starting off from the station or if it is coming in to the station to let the people off. 107

Table 15. Musical Examples for Test A (Fast-Slow)

Duration Example Fast-Slow (in seconds)

1. Stravinsky: Firebird 'Berceuse" Slow 56

2. Rossini: William Tell Overture Fast 11

3. Beethoven: Leonore Overture No. 3 Fast 12

4. Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras No. 2, Getting "The Little Train of the Caipira" slower 21

Test A (Fast-Flow) Results and Discussion

There were ten items in all that were scored. Items 1 and 2 were identifying fast and slow difference with the metronome. Items 3 and

4 related to whether the child reacted to fast with louder, harder, or bigger movements and slower with softer or smaller movements. Items

5 and 6 dealt with whether appropriate fast and slow pictures were chosen and items 7 through 10 were the musical examples (see Table 16).

Thirty-six children responded correctly to both the first and sec­ ond items. Thirty-six children reacted to a request for faster activity with harder, bigger movement and thirty-five reacted to slower with softer, smaller movement. All thirty-eight children chose appropriate pictures to represent fast and slow. Thirty-two children responded cor­ rectly to the first slow musical example; thirty-six responded correctly to the first fast example. Twenty-one responded correctly to the second fast example and twenty-seven to the last getting slower example.

'fteen children used just the terminology "fast" and "slow" for at j ^t one of their responses. Three children used only fast and slow terminology and did so correctly. Thirty-three children used pictures 108

Table 16. Results of Test A

Discrimination Number Relative Item Indices Correct Difficulty

1 22.2 36 .053 2 22.2 36 .053 3 11.1 36 .053 4 11.1 35 .079 5 0.0 38 .0 6 0.0 38 .0 7 55.6 32 .158 8 22.2 36 .053 9 66.7 21 .447 10 88.9 27 .289 successfully in at least one of their responses, thirty-one used a combination of fast and slow with an appropriate picture correctly in at least one response, and one child used running as a response without reference to a picture of fast and slow specifically.

The mean score of a possible ten was 8.82; standard deviation 1.18

(see Table 17). Reliability based on the Kuder-Richardson 20 formula was

.41, fairly low. The data concerning item discrimination are presented in

Table 16. A total list of scores of all the main study subtests, as well as percentage correct for all subjects including a male-female comparison, are to be found in Table 26.

Pictures had been chosen for their appropriate and clear repre­ sentation of fast and slow movement and from pilot study experience with the fast-big-loud and the soft-slow-small connections, the fact that scores are high here is significant evidence of these connections. 109

Table 17. Mean, Standard Deviation, Kuder-Richardson 20 Reliability, and Standard Error of Measurement fcr Test A

Mean Standard Kuder-Richardson Standard Error Score Deviation 20 Reliability of Measurement

8.82 1.18 0.411 1.004

The musical examples were quite successful based on the number of correct responses. Efforts were made to keep dynamic differences to a minimum in these examples and to make them clearly and obviously fast or slow. The first two musical examples were apparently easier to associate with fast and slow than were the last two. The first example with its low orchestration may have helped the child in establishing the association with the turtle and the snail. Also used for a slow association was the picture of the mother rocking a baby.

The second example, the William Tell Overture, was fairly well identified with a running horse. The third example with a violin playing high and fast was probably harder to associate with a horse running. The fourth example, rallentando, was different and did not relate to the pictures used for the first two examples. The experi­ menter made a separate explanation and presented two different verbal pictures, (1) a train leaving a station and getting faster, and (2) a train getting slower to stop and let the people off.

Test B (Legato-Staccato)

The legato-staccato session began with showing each child various pictures representing legato and staccato movement. Pictures of activities representing the concepts of legato and staccato were added 110

TEST B (LEGATO-STACCATO)

Item Response

1. Look at these pictures and tell me what they are pictures of.

2. Now we are going to listen to some music. (Legato example) Choose some pictures that are like the music.

3. Now listen to this (staccato example). Choose some pictures that are like this music.

4. We are going to hear some more music. Show me with the pictures what the music is like.

5. Now try this one.

6. One more.

to the final form of Test B based on the success of the IIA (fast- slow) and IIC (high-low) subtest sessions. The pictures included: a boy bouncing a ball, frogs jumping, a girl jumping rope, children skating and sliding on ice, a duck swimming, a grasshopper hopping, a girl swinging, children sledding and skiing, children sliding down a slide, rabbits hopping, firemen going down a firepole, and a water­ fall. The children were asked to identify the pictures. Then they listened to two musical examples. After each example they were asked to choose a picture that was like the music (see Table 18). The two Ill pictures each child chose, representing the two types of sound, were separated out and used in describing the last three musical examples.

Table 18. Musical Examples for Test B (Legato-Staccato)

Legato- Duration Example Staccato (in seconds)

1. Design in Music (Bowmar), Theme and Variations, "Theme" legato 35 2. Design in Music (Bowmar), Theme and Variations, "First Variation" staccato 21 3. Design in Music (Bowmar), Bell Rondo, "Theme A" staccato 60 4. Saint-Saens: Carnival of the Animals, "The Swan" legato 71 5. Humperdinck: Hansel and Gretel, "Prayer" legato 55

Test B (Legato-Staccato) Results and Discussion

The items scored right or wrong were the five musical examples

(1-5) , whether an appropriate legato picture was chosen (b) , and whether an appropriate staccato picture was chosen (7). If two different pictures were chosen for the first two items, it was necessary to count them right. As can be seen below in Table 19, that resulted in thirty-eight correct for items one and two and therefore zero dis­ crimination. The next three musical examples indicated whether they had assigned and were using the pictures to represent the concept the experimenter felt was outstanding— legato and staccato. 112

Table 19. Results of Test B

Discrimination Number Relative Item Indices Correct Difficulty

1 0.0 38 .0 2 0.0 38 .0 3 100.0 21 .447 4 100.0 20 .474 5 75.0 17 .553 6 75.0 28 .263 7 75.0 24 .368

The mean score of a possible seven correct was 4.89 and standard deviation 1.48 (see Table 20). Reliability, based on the Kuder-Richard­ son 20 formula was .53 a fairly strong estimate in view of the number of children participating. The data concerning item discrimination are presented in Table 19.

Table 20. Mean, Standard Deviation, Kuder-Richardson 20 Reliability, and Standard Error of Measurement for Test B

Mean Standard Kuder-Richardson Standard Error Score Deviation 20 Reliability of Measurement

4.89 1.4849 0.531 1.166

Six children of the thirty-eight appeared to understand the differences to be listening for in this test. Eleven more missed only one and that may have been because the example had some other association not caught by the experimenter.

This test as it was set up in the final form did not attempt to elicit terminology; its sole purpose was to find an association 113 through which the children could indicate their recognition of legato and staccato in music.

One problem with at least the first eight children was not limiting the picture choice they could make when listening to a musical example. After this point the first two pictures chosen were separated out and the other pictures put away. Some children in choosing pic­ tures seemed to pick just the things that appealed to them, that they liked. For instance, one child had a jump rope and her interest in jumping rope seemed uppermost in her mind. Perhaps asking what were their favorite pictures and why may have helped explain some of their associations. One child felt one of the examples sounded like winter and Christmas. This example, the third musical example, did have some bell-like sounds in it. This child and perhaps others may have been listening for actual sound effects. Perhaps not really understanding what he was listening for, one child wanted to know if he were listen­ ing for fast and slow. Also, this is what he had been concerned with in the first test. As many as eighteen children seemed to assign the pictures indiscriminately, either backwards or to choose two pictures both legato or both staccato to the first two musical examples. It was necessary to count these first two choices correct if they were at all different in the event they would use their associations con­ sistently and thus discriminate the two types of articulation even if the experimenter did not associate the images in the same manner.

Once the pictures were chosen, as many as fourteen children seemed to simply use them in an alternating, every other, fashion as if that were what they expected. 114

Test C (High-Low)

The third session began with a tape of two animal sounds. The

child was asked to find pictures of what he heard. The taped sounds

were of a bird (item 1) and a lion (item 2). Items are numbered as

they were eventually scored. Then two pre-set pitches were played on

the tone-generating machine and the child was asked which sound was

was most like the lion (item 3) and which most like the bird (item 4).

This was followed by five musical examples where the child was asked

to show, by indicating the picture, whether the musical sound was

more like the bird or the lion. The five musical examples (items 5-9)

are listed in Table 21 below. The child was next asked what "high"

meant and what things are high. The same questions were asked for

"low." These items were not used in scoring. At the end of the

session the child was asked to react to a list of words (items 10-16)

by saying if any of them could mean high or low. The words were:

"soft," "quiet," "tall," "big," "short," "loud," and "small." These

were words found to be confused with the terms "high" and "low."

Correct responses were respectively: "low," "low," "high," "high,"

"low," "high," and "low." This was again done in an attempt to pursue

and further establish the association in the child's mind between

these terms and the terms "high" and "low."

There were twenty-two items in this test. However, only twenty-

five of the thirty-eight children responded to all twenty-two items.

Nine responded to 1-16 and four, 1-20. This was a result of adding

items as the test proceeded. This was done to separate the sound 115

TEST C (HIGH-LOW)

Item______Response

1. We're going to hear some animal sounds on this tape recorder. See if you can find the pictures of what you hear. Here is the first sound. Here is the second sound.

2. Now, listen to these sounds on this machine. First this sound (high), and then this sound (low).

Which sound is most like the lion? Which sound is most like the bird?

3. We are going to listen to some music. Tell me or show me with the pictures which is most like the music. First Second Third Fourth Fifth

4. What does the word "high" mean? ______

Can you think of other things "high" means?

5. What does the word "low" mean? ______

Can you think of other things "low" means?

6. I am going to say some words. You tell me if any of them could mean high or low. Soft Quiet Tall Big Short Loud Small 116

Table 21. Musical Examples for Test C (High-Low)

Duration Example High-Low (in seconds)

1. Double Bass low 9

2. Tchaikovsky: Marche Slave low 13

3. Bizet: Carmen Suite high 22

4. Saint-Saens: Carnival of the Animals, "Elephants" low 20

5. Beethoven: Leonore Overture No. 3 high 4

from the other aspects of the bird and lion associations (stimuli), to establish the sound association with the labeled high and low sounds of the tone generator, and to try and determine high and low on the machine from loud and soft dynamic level perceptions. Items 17 and 18 were questions about the bird sound— was it high or low? In items 19 and 20 the children were asked if the sound of the lion was high or low. Item 21 asked if the high pitch on the tone-generating machine was high or low and 22 if the low pitch was high or low. All thirty- eight, however, responded to items 1-16. These sixteen items were used in the statistics which follow in Test C Results and Discussion and the correlational figures which follow later (see p. 122).

Test C Results and Discussion

Table 22 below shows the results.

The mean score of a possible 16, was 13.34 and standard deviation

1.72 (see Table 23). Reliability was .402, again quite low. The data concerning item discrimination are presented in Table 22. 117

Table 22. Results of Test C

Discrimination Number Relative Item Indices Correct Difficulty

1 54.5 26 .316 2 27.3 33 .132 3 0.0 37 .026 4 9.1 36 .053 5 0.0 38 .0 6 18.2 35 .079 7 0.0 38 .0 8 18.2 35 .079 9 18.2 36 .053 10 42.7 19 .500 11 62.7 22 ,421 12 . 18.2 33 .132 13 27.3 31 .184 14 45.5 32 .158 15 54.5 23 .395 16 36.4 33 .132

Table 23. Mean, Standard Deviation, Kuder-Richardson 20 Reliability, and Standard Error of Measurement for Test C

Mean Standard Kuder-Richardson Standard Error Score Deviation 20 Reliability of Measurement

13.34 1.72 0.402 1.472 118

All children responded correctly to at least ten of the sixteen items. Twenty-six recognized the bird sound and matched it with the pic­ ture and thirty-three recognized the lion sound and matched it with the picture. All but one child identified the low sound on the tone- generating machine as being most like the lion and all but two matched the high tone with the bird. The musical example scores were all high, ranging from 35 to 38. The bird and lion associations seemed to work well with the musical examples. The attempt to establish labels or meanings for high and low again reveals the confusion associated with these terms. The confusions, as already noted, are with the spatial associations of height, direction (up and down) and of size of animals and things as well as their spatial placement (i.e., birds, airplane, and the sky are high, and grass, the ground, and lions are low), dynamic level, and even speed.

This test did not generate terms other than Mhigh" and "low" and those words found to be associated with these terms by the children in the previous pilot tests. The major thrust of this test was to allow the understanding of high and low pitch to come through the confusions mentioned. This was accomplished through the sound effect associations.

The musical examples were clearly high or low to the children.

Thirty-eight responded correctly to the double bass (low example), thirty-five to "Elephants" from Carnival of the Animals (low), and thirty-six to the Leonore Overture (high). Matching the tone- generating machine with the picture association of lion-low and bird- high also was apparently no problem, as can be seen in the scores of

37 and 36 respectively. The first two items, recognizing the bird 119 and lion sounds, involved some prompting by the experimenter and may have been confusing as the children did not know really what to expect except they would be hearing animal sounds. Only two pictures, of birds and a lion, were present but perhaps they did not understand their choices would be limited to those two kinds of animals. These may be reasons for slightly lower scores of 26 for the bird and 33 for the lion.

The word association list, items 10-16, gives some evidence of the association between these words and high-low concepts. In the word association items, the number correct indicates the associations which confuse the child. The total correct for these items range from

19-33 (see Table 26). It is interesting that only nineteen children associated soft with low. This was apparently the most confusing term. As noted earlier in the pilot studies, "soft" was most com­ monly associated with low dynamic level. The high-low sections of the two pilots each brought forth "soft" and "quiet" for "low" and

"loud" and "noisy" for "high" as prominant associations in the children's minds. There is also the tactile association which sur­ faced as part of the legato-staccato subtest in the pilots. Young children do not always use "soft" or "quiet" in their vocabulary thought they may understand when the terms are used by others. Also, these words were presented just as abstractions without a context and this may have hindered the association experience. Free assocaition, as to a certain extent this was, is like an open-ended question - often difficult even for an adult to divine what it is the questioner wants in terms of an answer. Some lower total correct scores are due to no 120 response. The greatest number making connection here between the words and the expected association was 33. The words getting the highest scores were "tall" and "small" (33 each), spatial-size terms. The next highest scores were for "short" (32) and "big" (31), again size terms. The lowest scores were for "loud" (23), "quiet" (22), and

"soft" (19). It is somewhat strange that the association was so weakly indicated here. In the items asking whether the lion and bird sounds were high or low (items 17-20), "loud" was often connected with lion and "high." In items 17-20, "loud" and "quiet" were more often associated than the spatial high and low, and high spatial much more often than low spatial.

Discussion of High-Low Extra Data ,

Twenty-nine children responded to the questions of, "What does high mean?" and "What dees low mean?" with spatial or size responses, three children referred to dynamic level, five referred to "hi"!, the salutation, and one in terms of speed. Three children did not volun­ teer an answer to these questions.

The questions (unscored) of the meaning of the words "high" and

"low" might have been better phrased, "What does high sound mean?" and the same for low. This still may not have brought forth many responses but that is speculation.

To items 17 and 18 ("Was the bird sound high or low?"), thirteen of twenty-nine responded high and sixteen low. To items 19 and 20

("Was the lion sound high or low?"), nineteen of twenty-nine responded high and eleven low. Items 20 and 21 concerned high and low on the 121 tone-generating machine. Seven out of twenty-five responding to these items answered correctly to both items; eleven responded that high was low and fourteen that the low tone was high. Two children thought both tones were low and five children thought both tones were high.

It is difficult to know what was uppermost in the children's minds at each specific stimulus experience. The confusion comes down to a question of which clues and cues are pertinent. The question in their minds might be "Do I call the machine sound high because it sounds like the bird that is high in the air, or low because it is soft and quiet like the bird sounds?" They do not necessarily respond to the variable asked for but to the words and their associations. Is the lion low because he is low to the ground, high because he is loud or high because he is big? With all of the inconsistencies gathered in many of the papers by the end of this test, it is interesting that earlier most of the children matched the lion and bird sound with the machine sounds.

The machine sounds might both be low because they are both quiet sounds, or both high because both are loud sounds. To one child, high on the machine might be high because it is like the bird which is high in the air and at the same time low on the machine is high because the lion is loud and it sounds like the lion.

The experimenter attempted to equalize the sounds dynamically.

The bird sounds were fairly loud and were at an aviary at a zoo and the lion sound was of a single lion roaring. The animal sound associ­ ations worked for the musical examples. It is the rest of the confused mixed associations which are interesting and in some cases difficult to 122

sort out. This was the most interesting and most successful test. Not

only were the scores high for the musical examples, the associated

sounds and pictures worked well. In addition, the confusion in terms was emphasized with the word associations requested of the children.

As stated earlier in the recounting of procedure (p. 104), in the final study, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, a test of mental age, was given to each child in the study. It functioned as both a way of meeting and establishing rapport with the children prior to the musical subtests and provided data for use in a correlation with the subtests.

The correlation data are given below. It will be noted in Table 24 that there is a relationship between high-low test scores and the

Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test significant at the .01 level. A possible explanation for this relationship may be the amount of verbal reaction required (the word association section, for example) being typical of intelligence test items. The Peabody Picture Vocabulary

Test, as a test of mental age, is an intelligence test.

Table 24. Main Study Correlation Data

Pearson Correlation Coefficients

Pla Fast Legato High

Pla 1.0000 0.1211 0.2400 0.5038 S=0.234 S=0.073 S=0.001

Fast 1.0000 0.4967 0.0838 S=0.001 S=0.308

Legato 1.0000 0.0978 S=0.280

High 1.0000

PI = Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. 123

The only other correlation of significance is between the legato- staccato test and the fast-slow test. It is possible that those children who understood fast and slow also understood the legato-stac- cato section. The test itself, as it was set up and scored, did not give the author a clear picture of the children's understanding,’but perhaps in its correlation to the fast-slow test, it may, in a second­ ary sense, give an indication of understanding. Since both tests con­ tained some items that were very likely to be scored as correct, that is, were to some extent "stacked" (see below), the higher test scores may have resulted in the significant correlation with the more appro­ priately high scores for the fast-slow test. However, it is then difficult to explain why there was not also a high correlation with the high-low test.

Those items which were likely to be scored as correct in the fast- slow test included the performance items, which resulted in fast-loud- big movement and slow-soft-small movement. In addition this might in­ clude the appropriate pictures and the determination of fast and slow movement of the metronome. Eight of ten items scored high across the board on this test. The legato-staccato test had two items, the first two, where simply choosing different pictures for each example allowed for correct answers to be scored. All of the children scored correctly.

As there were fewer scored items for the legato-staccato test and the first two of these were rendered nearly meaningless unless compared with the responses to the other musical examples, the overall score appears higher than the experimenter's evaluation of actual understand­ ing would suggest. 124

The means and standard deviations for the three subtests are presented In Table 25 and the overall test scores in Table 26.

Table 25. Means and Standard Deviations of the Three Main Study Subtests

Test Mean Standard Deviation

Fast 8.8158 1.1822

Legato 4.8947 1.4849

High 13.3421 1.7441

It is interesting to note that on the musical items in Test A the males did better across the board than the females. In the second test, both males and females scored one hundred percent on the first two musical items and on the last three, the males did better on two out of three. On the vocabulary association portion of Test C, the males did better on five of the seven items and did slightly better on most items across the board. 125

Table 26. Overall Mean Study Test Scores

Total Number Correct Responses Correct Responses Item (Percent of Total) for Males for Females Number Correct Responses (N=22, 57.9%) (N=16, 42.1%)

F-S 1 36 ( 94.7) 21 ( 95.5)a 15 ( 93.8)a 2 36 ( 94.7) 21 ( 95.5) 15 ( 93.8) 3 36 ( 94.7) 20 ( 90.9) 16 (100.0) 4 35 ( 92.1) 22 (10C.0) 13 ( 81.3) 5 38 (100.0) 22 (100.0) 16 (100.0) 6 38 (100.0) 22 (100.0) 16 (100.0) *■» / 32 ( 84.2) 19 ( 86.4) 13 ( 81.3) 8 36 ( 94.7) 22 (100.0) 14 ( 87.5) 9 21 ( 55.3) 14 ( 63.6) 7 ( 43.8) 10 27 ( 71.1) 16 ( 72.7) 11 ( 68.8) L-S 1 38 (100.0) 22 (100.0) 16 (100.0) 2 38 (100.0) 22 (100.0) 16 (100.0) 3 21 ( 55.3) 13 ( 59.1) 8 ( 50.0) 4 20 ( 52.6) 12 ( 54.5) 8 ( 50.0) 5 17 ( 44.7) 9 ( 40.9) 8 ( 50.0) 6 28 ( 73.7) 16 ( 72.7) 12 ( 75.0) 7 24 ( 63.2) 13 ( 59.1) 11 ( 68.8) H-L 1 26 ( 68.4) 17 ( 77.3) 9 ( 56.3) 2 33 ( 86.8) 20 ( 90.9) 13 ( 81.3) 3 37 ( 97.4) 21 ( 95.5) 16 (100.0) 4 36 ( 94.7) 21 ( 95.5) 15 ( 93.8) 5 38 (100.0) 22 (100.0) 16 (100.0) 6 35 ( 92.1) 21 ( 95.5) 14 ( 87.5) 7 38 (100.0) 22 (100.0) 16 (100.0) 8 35 ( 92.1) 21 ( 95.5) 14 ( 87.5) 9 36 ( 94.7) 22 (100.0) 14 ( 87.5) 10 19 ( 50.0) 8 ( 36.4) 11 ( 68.8) 11 22 ( 57.9) 14 ( 63.6) 8 ( 50.0) 12 33 ( 86.8) 19 ( 86.4) 14 ( 87.5) 13 31 ( 81.6) 19 ( 86.4) 12 ( 75.0) 14 32 ( 84.2) 19 ( 86.4) 13 ( 81.3) 15 23 ( 60.5) 14 ( 63.6) 9 ( 56.3) 16 33 ( 86.8) 21 ( 95.5) 12 ( 75.0)

Percent of subgroup response. Chapter V

SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Need for the Study

Children learn to distinguish sounds in the environment long before they enter school. A child at age four has already developed half of the intelligence he will possess at age seventeen (Bloom,

1964). Children show early and continued interest in sound through the time devoted to it in attention, experimentation, and play. Their experiences with sounds should have made them aware enough prior to formal education to distinguish changes in pitch, loudness levels, and rhythmic activity. Clear, completely developed thoughts about basic musical ideas, which may be classified in terms of particular proper­ ties, are probably not part of the preschool child's makeup. However, though the young child will not have a functioning conceptual frame­ work at a sophisticated level, he has experienced and perceived a great deal which, without doubt, has formed the beginnings of concepts relative to the area of music. The child also might understand a concept but be unable to explain or use the correct terminology in referring to it (Loucks, 1974).

Studies touching on concept development of young children, including discrimination of pitch (direction and high-low) and same- different (pitch series, chord, and rhythm pattern) have been done as

126 early as the 1930s with the number and extent of the studies increas­ ing since the late 1960s. However, there is still a great deal to be discovered. It is necessary to know to what stage concepts have progressed in order to plan a developing program of experiences (a curriculum) which will aid the child to more completely grasp musical phenomena in an ever more sophisticated way, i.e., the spiraling curriculum. If there are problems in focus (cenr.ration), if verbali­ zation is the stumbling block, then ways of determining that those obstacles exist and planning ways of either circumventing or teaching for the pertinent discriminations seem critical to learning when the child does reach school age.

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to determine the musical concept development of four-year-old children by using nonverbal and manipulative techniques.

Sub-Purposes

There was also an attempt (1) to find terms which children would use naturally to describe the music concepts of tempo, articulation, and pitch, (2) to see if certain terms would be used in common by a significant number of the children, and (3) to see if these terms would be used consistently.

Methods and Procedures

The test used in this study was developed and revised during the course of two pilot tests. The concepts tested were fast and slow, 128 legato and staccato, and high and low; also included were faster and slower and higher and lower. The test consisted of three subsections, each testing a different concept pair: (1) fast-slow, faster-slower;

(2) legato-staccato; and (3) high-low, higher-lower.

The initial activity items were validated by six experts includ­ ing preschool teachers, music specialists, and graduate students in music, and the music examples were likewise validated for their representative "aptness" for the concept under consideration.

The first pilot study was conducted with from five to ten children from a University sponsored child care program. Musical examples were on tape and the sessions were all tape recorded.

The fast-slow session demonstrated an apparent understanding of the concepts by the children and also an association between fast and loud and slow and soft. The legato-staccato session was confusing and unclear to the children. The high-low session produced the many confu­ sions with terminology experienced at least in part in other research

(see Chapter II). "High" was confused with "long," "tall," "big," and

"loud," and "low" with "quiet," "little," and "short." This was particularly revealed in the use of paired instruments and sound sources such as organ pipes and bells.

The sessions were determined to be too long. The first pilot used an extensive number of taped examples and also movement and manipulative-sensory experiences that were, in the case of the musical examples, cut in number and, in the case of the movement and manipulative items, reordered or eliminated where they did not produce 129 the intended result. Recording the sessions was found to be incon­ venient and distracting.

The second pilot was conducted with from six to seven children from a Columbus area Montessori preschool. This pilot included addi­ tional recorded sound effects of animals, birds, and machines and recorded examples of the extreme ranges of various solo instruments.

Also introduced in this pilot was a tone-generating machine, the use of which was meant to eliminate the visual size pitch terminology confusion which had been a problem thus far. These changes all concerned the high-low session. Another change involving two of the three sessions (A and C) was the use of pictures representing movement, fast and slow, legato and staccato, and pitch (sound sources) to elicit the use of terms and then associate them with the musical examples. This proved successful. The same confusions in all areas were still evidenced but more under control and intentionally pursued.

Main Study

The main study sessions involved thirty-eight children, twenty- two males and sixteen females, from three preschools in the Columbus area. Sessions were shortened to a length of fifteen to twenty minutes each. Confusing nonresponsive items and those determined to be too lengthy were eliminated. The three shortened concept sessions were preceded by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, a test of mental age, all individually administered. This intelligence test was intended for use as a possible correlation with the other test results and to serve as a way of meeting and allowing each child to become 130 comfortable with the tester.

The first session, Test A, included ten items. In these items the children were asked to describe the motion of a metronome and the motion of pictured animals both to bring forth the terms "fast" and

"slow" or the children's own terminology and to give them associations to use later in the session in identifying the motion of the music.

The children were, in addition, asked to run fast, then faster, walk slow, then slower, and to clap fast and faster, then slow and slower.

The session ended with the taped musical examples.

Pictures of activities representing the concepts of legato and staccato were added to the final form of Test B based on the success of the IIA (fast-slow) and IIC (high-low) subtest sessions. First the children identified the activities in the pictures and then were to indicate the ones they felt suited the musical examples. There were seven items in Test B.

The last session, Test C, which tested high-low, used representa­ tive high and low animal sounds as well as pictures of those sound sources. The sounds were of birds and a lion. These sounds were com­ pared to high and low tones produced on a tone-generating machine and then to musical examples. At the end of the session, the children were to respond to a list of words; the words being those seemingly most often confused with high and low pitch. There were twenty-two items in Test C.

Based on the data collected in this study, the following findings are presented: 131 Summary of Findings

1. Scores indicate that these four-year-old children understood the

concepts of fast and slow. They used the terms naturally and

accurately. They were able to demonstrate this understanding

physically with movement, identify fast and slow movement in

another person or moveable object (metronome), identify pictures

of fast and slow movement, and associate these concepts, as well as

the pictures, with musical examples.

2. The four-year-old children in this study were moderately success­

ful in identifying rallentando. By the time the final test was

arrived at, the concepts faster and slower had been cut to

rallentando only for lack of a truly clear-cut example. The use

of faster and slower was now tied to the running, walking, and

clapping activities in pursuing the apparently natural physical

association with louder and softer.

3. Four-year-old children respond to a request for fast physical

activity such as clapping or playing an instrument with loud,

faster with louder, soft or quiet with slow, and slower with

softer. When faster became louder, they also tended toward

larger movements, and the slower movements, which elicited softer

responses, tended to be associated with smaller movements.-

4. The legato-staccato session was inconclusive. The number correct

for the first two musical examples, as they had to be scored, gave

a false indication of understanding for these first two of the

five examples. The other three are, perhaps, more accurate 132

readings, but they were still difficult to interpret as these had

to be based on the responses to the first two examples.

Six to eleven of the thirty-eight children gave some evidence

of understanding by their appropriate and consistently correct use

of the pictorial representations and their more consistently cor­

rect responses.

The legato-staccato and high-low subtests of the main study

did not produce terminology. Due to the difficulty of these two

subtests, the secondary objectives of terminology identification

were dropped. Associations were found that made it possible for

the children to indicate their recognition of legato and staccato,

high and low. This' was more successful with the high-low subtest

than it was with legato-staccato.

5. The matching of animal sounds for high and low pitch did relate to the

musical examples and the discrimination was successful. The con­

cepts of higher and lower were dropped by this stage because of

the many terminology and conceptual confusions high and low had

brought forth through the pilots. Though the final stage still

was measuring those associations, it had become more important to

find a means whereby the children could correctly relate to high

and low sound and this was done through the animal sound effect

association.

6. There is a definite but not always consistent relationship between

the terms "high" (as used spatially), "big," "tall," and "loud"

with high pitch for young children. This is true also for the

terms "low" (as used spatially), "short," "small," "soft" or 133

"quiet" and low pitch.

7. There is a relationship between high-low test scores and the

Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test significant at the .01 level.

This may be due to the considerable verbal reaction that was

required in this subtest and the dependence of intelligence tests

on verbal ability.

8. There is a significant relationship between the legato-staccato

test and the fast-slow test. This may have been a result of scor­

ing in these two subtests in which certain items were nearly always

counted as correct (refer to page 123) . In the fast-slow test

these items did not affect the legitimacy of the findings as to the

children's understanding of these concepts. In the legato-staccato

test, the overall score was likely to appear higher than actual

understanding would suggest. It may also be the case that the

children who understood fast and slow did, in fact, also, under­

stand legato and staccato.

Conclusions

This study was designed to bring together the clearest and most obvious descriptive movement, physical sensations, pictorial repre­ sentations, and musical examples in order to give the children as many ready means and associations besides verbal labels to use in identifying and showing their comprehension of the concepts fast and slow, legato and staccato, and high and low in musical stimuli. It was not meant to be a teaching program. Item discrimination was not an intended function. It was hoped that most four-year-old children 134 would demonstrate their understanding by getting the items correct and thus show that they do indeed understand these concepts if not neces­ sarily all the correct terms.

1. It is possible to develop a test using nonverbal and manipulative

techniques by which four-year-old children are able to demonstrate

their understanding of musical concepts. Children of four years

of age do have a basic understanding of concepts associated with

music and, given the means of expressing the understanding devel­

oped in the course of this study, were able to show that under­

standing. It is possible to find associations that young children

can use to indicate fast and slow and high and low. There is still

some question as to whether the majority of four-year-old children

are able to discriminate and understand the qualities of legato

and staccato. The concepts of articulation do not appear to be

beyond some four-year-old children, however.

2. Loud and soft are dominating aspects of any musical or sound

stimulus for four-year-old children.

3. Vocabulary is a problem for children of this age, in particular

the terms "high" and "low."

Observations

In the course of the pilot studies and the main study, various student responses not directly concerned with the purposes of the study struck the experimenter as interesting and even noteworthy. As these are observations, conclusions will not be drawn. The intermodal experiences which the children in this study were best

able to associate with the aural concepts were movement (used in

connection with fast and slow, legato and staccato) and visual

(pictures, as used with all three concepts pairs, fast and slow,

legato and staccato, and high and low). The tactile experiences

were the hardest to associate with the aural concepts.

If a musical example involves a change (as was the case with the

musical examples of rallentando, accelerando, and glissando high

to low and low to high), the children are not likely to hear the

continuum but rather the circumstance at the beginning and/or the

circumstance at the end.

There seems to be some connection between the children's ability to

hear gradual changes or gradations in loud and soft, fast and slow,

and their ability to produce these gradations.

Children are better able to listen for one aspect of a musical

experience at a time, e.g., the problems in hearing the change in

the musical examples of rallentando and accelerando and those of

Pilot Test IC, getting higher and getting lower. This is also true

for producing or performing a requested musical (or any) operation,

i.e., in producing combinations of fast and slow with loud and

soft in the clapping items of Pilot Test IIA.

Four-year-old children are readily able to identify environmental

or animal sounds but are not as readily able to group them, at

least by high and low (see Pilot Test IIC) .

Children are visually oriented, as was particularly evident in

Pilot Test IA, when they responded to items in terms of their size, 136

i.e., the size of organ pipes, bells, and the three bears), rather

than the concept of pitch.

7. Children are better able to respond to an inquiry about a musical

or other experience when the question is posed in a multiple-

choice format. Open-ended questioning may bring no reply or con­

fusion as to what is actually expected. "Does this scarf or rope

feel smooth or bumpy?" would probably have elicited more correct

responses but at the same time would have restricted the child's

original-personal vocabulary.

8. Children tend to make rapid decisions or quick judgments in

response to the type of inquiries posed in this study. They either

believe they understand the question and subsequent answer, are

confused and make a "handy" guessing reply (probably tied to and

based upon their perceptual bias), or are confused and unable to

answer.

9. Children particularly enjoy the playing experiences, actually

handling the musical instruments. In the course of the test most

of these experiences were eliminated in order to remove distractions.

Recommendations for Further Study

1. The entire test needs to be repeated with more subjects in order

to give more reliable results. Also some changes appear advis­

able in improving the test. In the fast-slow subtest it is clear * that the children do understand the concepts. More musical

examples would improve this section. The concept of slow was only

tested once musically in the first example. More examples would more firmly establish that the terms do, in fact, transfer to a musical setting.

In the legato-staccato subtest there seemed to be too many extrane­ ous associations diverting the children from the movement associ­ ation that the author intended they match and identify with the musical examples. Perhaps more time should be spent in discussing the feeling of moving in the ways the pictures illustrated in order to eliminate from their minds associations with the sound effects of seasons or holidays and give them some assurance that the experimenter is no longer asking them to listen for fast and slow.

The high-low subtest was very successful; the children did respond to the musical examples correctly and use the associations provided successfully. The items designed to reveal their confusion were successful also. The experimenter would repeat this session in total using all twenty-two items with each child. Some of the experimenter's terminology in asking the questions may have added some confusion to this subtest. For instance, in items 17, 18,

19, and 20, the experimenter's question should have been "Is the bird sound a high sound or a low sound?" and similarly with the lion sound, "Is it a high or low sound?". The manner of asking the question may have been misleading.

In regard to the teaching of these concepts and in particular high and low, it is a fact that the spatial aspect is an association necessary in music reading. However, from the evident confusion involved in the mixed associations the children already bring with 138 them, it appears some firm and consistent terminology for the concepts need to be established and sorted out either prior to or as these terms are used in a musical context. APPENDIX A

Parental Permission Form and Questionnaire

139 140

Dear Parents:

This note, short questionnaire, and persmission form are concerned with a doctoral dissertation study which deals with four-year-olds and their understanding of some basic musical principles. I am interested in those understandings the four- year-old has developed from his normal day to day experience. I will be working with the children individually; each child participating in three short fifteen minute sessions on three different days. In these sessions, the children will be re­ sponding to taped musical items, verbally and by associating the taped items to pictures. I anticipate that these sessions will be enjoyable for the children. I would like to ask your permission to work with your four-year-old and to request that if you do allow him or her to participate, that you will fill in the attached questionnaire. I very much appreciate your help and cooperation.

Sincerely,

Linda P . Young graduate student in music education The Ohio State University

I give my approval for ______to participate in this music concept study.

Date 141

QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDY ON YOUNG CHILDREN'S CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT

Child's Name ______

Birthdate ______Sex

Address ______

Parent's Occupations ______

1. How many children are there in your family? ______

2. What are the ages of your other children? ______

3. Does anyone in your family play an instrument? ______

4. If yes, which instruments? ______

5. Is music - recordings or radio played frequently _____,

occasionally ____, rarely ____ in your home?

6. What kinds of music is your child exposed to primarily?

Folk ____ Country___ Rock___ Jazz____ Classical____

Children's songs____

7. Have you attended musical events with your child?

frequently , occasionally , rarely , never____

8. Do you read to your child in your home frequently ____ ,

occasionally , rarely , never ?

9. Have you or anyone in your family spent time singing for or with

your child? frequently____ , occasionally___ , rarely____ ,

never ?

10. Can you give any further information about your child's experience with or experimentation with sounds which may be musically ori­ ented - for instance does he sing to himself or explore with vocal or other sounds in his play? ______APPENDIX B

Drawings Used in the Main Study

142 The pictures used in the main study are on file, and copies of these pictures will be made available, upon request, by contacting either the author or the School of Music at The Ohio

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