A developmental approach to voice science

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Vocal development had been studied mostly with a focus on speaking, and only rarely, on singing. Traditional theories on singing development are often based on wrong premises, e.g. eurocentrism, and reliable analyses of singing are missing or selective. A new theory ‐ inspired by the principles of Piaget's theory ‐, and a new methodology ‐ based on acoustic measures ‐ are proposed. The voice starts to organise at birth, and gradually adapts to the cultural surrounding and its conventions concerning language, music, and social rules. Vocal and musical behaviour are highly adaptive and constructive, and concern two symbolic systems: music and language. The child develops the voice by playing and imitating. The development proceeds from sensorimotor activities towards more and more conscious actions and thoughts. In order to study children's singing, computer aided programs were devised to analyse and represent pitch, timing, pitch qualities, and syllables. This method yields complex configurations of these parameters describing children's song singing. Detailed descriptions allow to reconstruct the strategies children apply to invent or learn new songs. The empirical results from children at various ages demonstrate that the focus on the analysis of the organisation of the vocal expression is a promising research strategy.