Development of Children's Verbal Interpretative Responses to Music Listening

Abstract

The central purpose of this research was to determine the nature of children 's verbal responses to repeated hearings of a brief music excerpt when asked systematically-designed questions that encouraged interpretative responses. Three specific research questions served as the basis for the investigation: (a) Is there consistent agreement about the basic form and content of the responses as the result of independent analyses by expert judges? (b) If so, is the subsequent assignment of categories to responses systematically related to age? (c) If so, is this relationship similar to research findings in other developmental literature? Thirty-three kindergarten through fifth-grade children from a Midwestern public elementary school were interviewed individually. Their responses were recorded, transcribed to written text, and submitted to three judges who were directed to (a) devise a categorization system that they felt encompassed the range and character of responses; (b) assign the devised categories to the individual responses. The data were analyzed for patterns that suggested a developmental sequence, either unique to music listening or related to other developmental studies. Results indicate: (a) judge consensus over the form and content of the responses; (b) age tendencies in responses to three of the four questions asked; (c) similarities between the development of verbal responses to music and visual art; (d) general agreement with descriptions of the artistic growth of elementary school-aged children.

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