Understanding the development of musicality: Contributions from longitudinal studies.

Abstract

In developmental psychology and music education, there has been a growing interest in understanding development of during infancy and childhood (Stadler Elmer, 2011; Trehub, 2003; Welch, 2006). This review considers contribution longitudinal studies have made to our knowledge and understanding of emergence and development of musicality. Before outlining various findings of this summary, some comments can be made regarding term musicality, and why longitudinal approach has been used.The word is ambiguous and a number of different meanings can be found in literature. Definitions of term found in dictionaries commonly presuppose constructs of ability, accomplishment, and knowledge, often with reference to conventions surrounding performance (OED, 2014; Merriam-Webster, 2014). The OED definition for example is, the quality or character of being musical; accomplishment or aptitude in music; sensibility (OED online, 2014). This conception signifies background conventions of skill, that is, implicit comparison with a generic model of what good or competent knowledge constitutes.Such definitions should be distinguished from construct often found in infancy research and parent- child interaction (Trehub, 2003). Here is used in a more general sense and refers to biases or predispositions that underpin all activities. Tafuri (2008) suggests we substitute term intelligence for musicality, now better defined as the ability to understand or produce music, where produce includes both ability to perform and to compose/improvise (p. 123). Another broader definition of is outlined by Malloch and Trevarthen (2009) in their model of communicative musicality, where they use words musical and musicality in particular ways, commenting,When we talk of talk of of mother-infant interaction, we are not talking of what we generally understand to be music... we are pointing to innate human abilities that make music production and appreciation possible. (p. 4)The research focusing on developmental origins of is quite diverse, for example, examining how infants perceive organized sound patterns, study of links between early language acquisition and musicality, and consideration of how young children's activities reflect or correspond to locally contextualized situated meanings. These considerations of definitions and expressions of indicate one way to situate studies on development of musicality-that is, on a dimension where precise and specific skills can be placed at one end of spectrum and research on communicative at other (see Figure 1).The current understanding of development of during infancy and childhood is built in part on research that has adopted a longitudinal methodological perspective, that is, by studying same child (or children) over an extended period of time. Through doing so, it has been possible to gain a developmental picture of emergence of those skills, competencies, or abilities said to represent musicality. Given that aim of this article is to provide an overview of what has emerged from results of longitudinal studies, one or two comments about this methodology seem warranted.Within developmental psychology, considerable attention has been paid to methodological advantages and disadvantages of both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs when studying development. The main question is what can be justifiably inferred from findings where development is examined by studying single individuals across time compared with other research strategies such as comparing different groups of people at different ages. With latter, although cross-sectional studies offer considerable advantages regarding resources (e. …