The Development of Musical Pattern Perception in School-Aged Children

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether children's development of musical pattern perception is a function of their audiation ability, as measured by the Intermediate Measures of Music Audiation (IMMA). The IMMA is a test of children's ability to compare short tonal and rhythmic musical patterns (Gordon, 1982). All elementary children (N = 48) at a private elementary school participated in musical activity from January 1998 through May 1998. Children sang songs; played songs on recorder and hand drum; performed in an Orff Schulwerk orchestra; read selected rhythmic patterns using syllables from the French conservatory system; and sang and signed selected melodic patterns using solfege syllables and Curwen hand signs, one hour weekly from January through May, 1998. A univariate repeated measures analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), with tonal pretest and posttest as dependent variables, audiation group as factor and age as covariate, showed a significant main effect for audiation group, F (1, 45) = 24.93, p< .001. A univariate repeated measures analysis of covariance (ANCOVA), with rhythm pretest and posttest as dependent variables, audiation group as factor and age as covariate, showed a significant interaction between gain from pretest to posttest and audiation group. High audiation children, with an adjusted rhythm posttest mean of 33.84 (SE = 0.48), gained +1.52; low audiation children, with an adjusted rhythm posttest mean of 29.96 (SE = 0.53), showed a net loss of -1.57. These results show that children with differing levels of audiation ability respond to musical sound differently. Whereas children may have positive musical experiences, they may not necessarily use visual, tactile, kinesthetic, or spatial information to organize their perception of musical sound into patterned mental images.

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