Abstract
ABSTRACT Tests of musical ability in children have relied on diverse conceptions of what musical abilities are. Recent investigations suggest that such conceptions can be seen as socially constructed and differ between cultures, sub-groups, and individuals. Based on a previous study on conceptions of adult musical ability, we designed a questionnaire targeting musical behaviours of 3–6-year-old children. 922 German adults who regularly spend time with children assessed how often a musical child would show these behaviours. Principal component analysis revealed four components of childhood musical ability: musical communication, enthusiasm and motivation, analytical understanding of music, and musical abilities in a narrow sense. The importance assigned to the components differed depending on musical expertise: Participants with higher expertise rated analytical music skills as significantly less important. Results suggest that ecologically valid tests of musical ability in childhood should cover a wide range of skills and observable behaviours.
Highlights
To investigate the development of musical abilities, various testing batteries and procedures have been devised and published over the course of the last century (e.g. Bentley, 1966; Gordon, 1965, 1989; Seashore, 1938/1967; Wing, 1981; the terms ‘musical ability‘ and ‘musicality‘ will be used interchangeably in the following)
We compared our results to those of Hallam (2010), who explored the conceptions of musical ability in adults in 660 individuals
In order to compare our results with the conception of musicality in adults, we grouped the items on the Musical Child Questionnaire (MCQ) according to the categories used in the study by Hallam (2010), which did not report results at the item level
Summary
To investigate the development of musical abilities, various testing batteries and procedures have been devised and published over the course of the last century (e.g. Bentley, 1966; Gordon, 1965, 1989; Seashore, 1938/1967; Wing, 1981; the terms ‘musical ability‘ and ‘musicality‘ will be used interchangeably in the following). To investigate the development of musical abilities, various testing batteries and procedures have been devised and published over the course of the last century The available tests differ in their underlying conceptions of musicality (Shuter-Dyson, 1999). This has led to a great diversity of testing procedures that make it difficult to compare results across studies. To better understand how testing procedures relate to the manifold developmental processes that constitute musical development, it is useful to take a step back to review the concept of ‘musical ability’: Generally, musical ability is not assumed to be a natural and uniform trait, but a social construct with different meanings in different cultures, subgroups, and even individuals (Blacking, 1971; Hallam & Prince, 2003). It has been suggested that common conceptions of childhood musicality are broad and multiform (Haroutounian, 2000), but how accepted such broad conceptions really are has never been systematically investigated
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