Effects of Instruction and Task Format on Preschool Children's Music Concept Discrimination

Abstract

Two studies were completed to investigate young children's ability to identify single and combined musical elements in response to listening, movement, and singing activities. Study 1 was an examination of the effects of short-term instruction on preschool children's ability to apply decentration to musical tasks. Subjects ( N = 30) were divided into (a) an experimental group, which participated in four small-group instruction sessions designed to teach the discriminations fast/slow and smooth/choppy as well as these elements' four possible combinations and (b) a posttest-only control group. Results indicated that instruction was significantly related to subjects' ability to identify and label musical characteristics, and that subjects were significantly more accurate with single versus double discrimination responses. Study 2 was designed to replicate aspects of the previous study, with the addition of singing as a response mode and age as a variable. All the preschool-age subjects ( N = 42) received the instruction component of Study 1. Results of the listening test again indicated that subjects were significantly more successful with the single discrimination task and that older children scored significantly higher than younger children. The subjects were better able to label simultaneous musical characteristics in their own singing than in recorded listening examples. Conclusions drawn, based on both studies, include: (1) preschool-age children can easily learn to make and label single discriminations; (2) most young children may not be ready for music listening tasks requiring attention to more than one element at a time; (3) children's ability to make discriminations based on their own performance may develop earlier than their ability to make discriminations in listening situations; and (4) initial indications of discrimination may be demonstrated through singing in simultaneous imitation with a model.