The relative importance of children’s criteria for representational adequacy in the perception of simple sonic stimuli

Abstract

This study investigates children’s metarepresentational competence (MRC) with regard to listening to and making sense of simple sonic stimuli. Using diSessa’s (2002) seminal work on MRC in mathematics and sciences as background, it aims to assess the relative importance children attribute to several criteria for representational adequacy of graphical representations of sonic stimuli, as well as to investigate the impact of children’s age and music background on their valuations of the relative importance of these criteria. Four groups of children (8–9- and 11–12-year-olds with and without extra music education) were exposed to short and simple sonic fragments. For each fragment they received a set of pairs of representations from which they had to choose one from each pair. The representations were organized in pairs of opposites for two of the four representational criteria involved in the study (correctness, formality, transparency, and neatness). The findings revealed a development in children’s personal hierarchies of representational criteria with growing age and musical education towards the following ranking: (1) correctness; (2) neatness; (3) formality; and (4) transparency. Theoretical, methodological, and educational implications are discussed.