Recognition of Chord Changes by 4- and 5-Year-Old American and Argentine Children

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to investigate young children's abilities to discriminate between two chords played as the accompaniment of a melody and played alone with no melody. After receiving brief training in harmonic discrimination, 167 children ages 4 and 5 from four preschools were tested in their ability to discriminate between the chords “I” and “V6/5” in the song “En la Torre de una Iglesia” or between the chords “i” and “VII” in “Drunken Sailor.” ANOVAs with repeated measures were performed for age, school, order of stimulus presentation (within variable), and type of stimulus on children s scores for each song. Both analyses indicated that age, type of stimulus, and the interaction of these two variables affected children's performance in the test significantly. In addition, order of presentation was found to be a significant variable of children's scores for the song “Drunken Sailor.” Five-year-olds could detect harmonic changes in simple chord progressions, but were unable to do so when a melody was superimposed over the progression. Four-year-olds could not identify the chord changes of either stimuli.