Infant Musicality

New Research for Educators and Parents

Johannella Tafuri, Elizabeth Hawkins, Graham Welch

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780754665069
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351562867
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

What can infants hear? What are their reactions to music? Is it useful for them to sing and listen to music? Is their auditory sensitivity developed before their birth? At what age do they start singing, and clapping their hands? How can their musical development be improved? These (and other) questions are present in today's debate on music education and the responses are normally given in an intuitive way. It is now necessary and urgent to sketch a developmental profile of infants, starting from their earliest manifestations. In the last 30 years, research in this field has been progressively developed. In most cases research has been devoted to single aspects of more complex problems. Moreover, it has been based on non-homogeneous categories of subjects and by different methods. Motivated by the fact that many open problems need to be solved, Professor Tafuri decided, in 1998, to begin a longitudinal research project devoted to studying the musical development in children from 0 to 6 years, with particular attention on the ability to sing in tune. During these 6 years, the children would have a regular music education experience with their mothers and often other members of the immediate family. This book has two main areas of focus. The first reconstructs the development of human musical abilities. Tafuri systematically reports studies of the development of vocal, rhythmic and motor abilities through the observation of the same participants for three years, beginning with the mothers' experiences in the last three months of pre-natal life. The programme of musical activities and the modalities of the collaboration with the parents are described. The second area of focus puts forward an educational perspective based on the results of the research. The amount and the quality of the collected data can allow parents and educators to plan different activities by considering the starting point for individual participants and the development of the

PART I
Musical Development

Chapter 1
The Literature on Musical Development from 0 to 3 Years of Age

There has always been a certain fascination with the topic of when musical development begins. Not only musicians are curious about this, but also parents and educators, the former because they are anxious (and perhaps ambitious) concerning the future of their offspring, and the latter because they wonder how they can advance the potential of something that may seem to be mysterious and beyond their control.

When science, or to be more specific, musical psychology, began to take an interest in musical ability at the end of the nineteenth and start of the twentieth century and first attempted to “measure” it with the further intention of trying to “predict” musical development, they concentrated on school-age children. A major reason for this choice was because of the difficulty of giving “pen and paper” tests to children any younger. In subsequent studies, with the help of a different kind of testing, they targeted younger and younger children. After the discovery that a foetus begins to hear at about the 24th week of pregnancy, attention was directed to studying the effects of prenatal hearing on the development of musicality and the early reactions of newborn infants.

Nowadays, literature on the various aspects of musical development abound. If we wanted to compile a full and detailed catalogue of research done so far, one chapter would certainly not suffice. (The interested reader is directed towards Hargreaves (1986), Lucchetti (1992), Deliège and Sloboda (1996) and McPherson (2006) for more research-based background literature.) We shall, therefore, limit ourselves to a synthetic presentation of studies that are considered to be the most relevant, especially in relation to those aspects most closely studied in the research dealt with in this book. Ample citations of research and studies will be given in order to enable further reading by interested readers who wish to examine the topic further.

1.1 Prenatal Memory and Early Experiences of Newborn Infants

Over half a century ago, the otorhinolaryngologist Alfred Tomatis suggested that, based on his experiments, the auditory system starts to function during prenatal life and, therefore, children can hear before they are born. He was accused of charlatanism and threatened with expulsion from the medical association (Tomatis, 1977). Nevertheless, his research and that by others subsequently has led to this claim being accepted and there are numerous scientific studies on the hearing ability of the foetus, as well as on motor reactions to auditory stimuli in general or to musical stimuli in particular (such as Porzionato, 1980; Dumaurier, 1982; Shetler, 1989; Woodward, 1992; Lecanuet, 1996; Parncutt, 2006).

In the light of these numerous contributions, it is possible to summarize some essential points:

• the auditory system starts to function at around the 24th week in some foetuses and after the 30th week in all of them (see, in particular, Lecanuet, 1995; Parncutt, 2006);
• the foetus reacts to sounds in the interior environment (intrauterine sounds of various kinds, from the mother’s heartbeat to the ripples made by their own movements) and from the exterior environment (voices, sounds, music), with variations in heartbeat (acceleration/deceleration) and with movements, varying from brusque to gentle, of the eyelids, the head, the limbs, the trunk;
• the quality and quantity of the reactions depend on the sound quality of the stimulus, of the behavioural state of the foetus (deep sleep, active sleep, quietly awake, actively awake) and, in the case of musical stimuli, also probably on the effects of music on the mother;
• during the foetal stage it is possible already to bring about habitual reactions to certain stimuli (for example, babies who have spent the prenatal period near an airport do not wake up or give a start if an aeroplane takes off nearby), a phenomenon that shows the discriminatory ability of the foetus and the possible effects on learning that can be detected subsequently at the postnatal stage.

Recent years have also been marked by an increase in research on newborn behaviour (cf. Aucher, 1987; Woodward, 1992; Papousek H., 1996; Papousek M., 1996; Fassbender, 1996; Trehub, 2001; 2003) and the results can be summarized as follows:

• the newborn are sensitive to sounds and musical stimuli; they demonstrate this with various gestures (for example, they bat their eyelids, open their eyes wide and stare, turn their head towards the source of the sound and stop crying);
• they demonstrate an ability to distinguish sounds by reacting in different ways to the changes in any of the qualities of the stimulus (such as intensity, speed, timbre, melody) and they soon demonstrate that they have preferences;
• some reactions by newborns seem to reveal a kind of memory and learning with respect to prenatal auditory experiences (for example, they prefer their mother’s voice, they are soothed by recordings of the mother’s heartbeat and by music that they have heard during the prenatal phase, they show familiarity with loud noises that they seem to have heard before).

On this last point concerning the presence of possible forms of prenatal memory, we would like to cite two studies in particular. Wilkin (1996) invited a group of expectant mothers, beginning from the 32nd week of pregnancy, to listen to four pieces of music. Six weeks after delivery the reactions of the newborns were observed when they listened to the same tunes. Comparisons were made with the reactions of an equal number of newborns who had not been exposed to this music. The first group displayed more attention, receptiveness and motor responses than those in the control group.

A study by Woodward (1992) attempted to demonstrate prenatal memory by measuring its effect on the rhythm of non-nutritive sucking behaviour. A group of expectant mothers, from the 34th week, listened twice a day to a piece of music, one of a choice of two presented by the researcher. Between the third and fifth day after birth, the same piece of music was played to the infants in addition to a new tune, after giving them a pacifier that could register the rate of non-nutritive sucking. Analysis of the graph lines showed that sucking was interrupted for longer when listening to a known piece of music rather than to a new one. This difference in behaviour, considered as a form of attention, was interpreted, although cautiously, as a possible demonstration of conditioning resulting from prenatal listening.

Furthermore, if we look at the studies of one of the most famous and extensive researchers of auditory perception during the early months of life, Sandra Trehub, we find a series of insightful results: babies are born with a predisposition for music; the basic principles of perceptive organization are already functioning in early infancy (Trehub, Trainor and Unyk, 1993). As other researchers have also demonstrated, they are sensitive to the elements of music, in particular to changes in pitch, tempo, beat, duration and tone (Trehub, 2003). Babies categorize musical sequences on the basis of global and relational properties, while the melody plays a critical role in perception (Trehub, Thorpe and Morrongiello, 1987; Trehub, Bull and Thorpe, 1984).

Stern also found that infants between eight and 11 months were able to distinguish the transformation of a melody if the melodic contour is altered or if some sounds are changed (Stern, Spieker and Mackain, 1982). Similarly, other researchers have found that the ability to group sounds appears already at the age of two months (Fassbender, 1993). From the age of four to six months, infants are able to group and segment units, both in speech and music (Fassbender, 1995) and they show sensitivity to musical phrase structures based on pitch and rhythmic patterns (Krumhansl and Jusczyk, 1990; Jusczyk and Krumhansl, 1993).

1.2 Vocal Communication: Leading to Speech

When do infants begin to communicate?

During the early months of life, newborns do not yet speak but, for their own affective and mental health, they need to receive information from and about the world and to communicate their needs and desires. From birth onwards, infants manifest their discomforts (and later also their satisfactions) by reactions that use sounds. After crying and screaming (the three basic functions of which are to signal pain, satisfaction and hunger), they soon discover the existence of different kinds of sounds (such as wailing, whimpering, whining and gurgling) and produce these in a richer and more varied way, such as by using sounds with vowels and consonants, as they gradually progress towards mastering phonation (due also to the development of the larynx) and in relating to the world beyond themselves. Very early on, the newborn are sensitive to the reactions that their sounds provoke. Already towards the end of the first month, the newborn expects to receive satisfaction of the need that gave rise to the cry. At times, the infant starts with a long low whimper that increases in volume until it becomes a cry, according to the carer’s speed in reacting (Wolff 1969).

Newborns also communicate with their eyes, with an increase in motor activity, and very soon also with facial expressions and smiles. Nevertheless, sound communication continues to be most important and varied. Elicited by their mothers, young infants also imitate vocal intonation in an increasingly active way. Through this interaction with the mother, they learn to recognize and share emotions and knowledge of the world.

In this interaction, according to one researcher on the birth of language, Bénédicte de Boysson-Bardies, a special part is played by the exchange of vocalization that takes place around three months of age, and only for a short period, called turn-taking, where “mother and child respond to each other by taking turns vocalizing. […] The infant begins to vocalize when the adult stops talking to him, a situation that occurs again several times, giving the impression of a conversation” (Boysson-Bardies, 1999, p.76).

The way that adults speak to small children is instinctively higher-pitched. It has an exaggerated modulation of intonation contour, moderate intensity and gentle sonority, syllabic and word repetition, with decelerated pronunciation. Infants show special interest towards this form of communication (termed ‘motherese’, ‘infant-directed speech’ or ‘parentese’) with positive effects on interactive communication.

Key prosodic characteristics of speech (frequency, intensity, rhythm), which many researchers classify as “musical” qualities, “melodies of maternal language”, are therefore important for newborns who perceive them very early. They prefer their mother’s speech with a high-pitched voice and sing-song intonation (Fernald, 1989, 1992; Papousek M., 1995). As Fernald added, “…the prosodic patterns of maternal speech serve psychobiological functions central to the development of communication in the first year of life” (1992, p. 270). In the first mother-infant dialogues, or protoconversations, both try to synchronize on the same rhythmic beat. This behaviour was studied by Malloch (1999/2000) who analysed the temporal characteristics and the pitch in the responses of some newborns (from six weeks old) during dialogue activities with the mother. In his studies of mother-infant communication, Malloch identified the high level of attunement as a manifestation of a communicative interaction which was described as both cooperative and co-dependent.

According to Trehub and Nakata (2001-2002) the melodic contours used by mothers in this interaction are unique to each one, and they seem to have beneficial effects on the newborn, serving both as an aid to distinguishing their mother from other people, and as a reinforcement of emotional ties.

In addition to relational or “social” vocalizations, other authors identify vocalizations that Dumaurier calls “private” in her survey (1982). They consist of vocal sounds produced by newborns when they are alone, awake and very active. They are a form of exploration of their own phonation. It is almost an exercise, an inner sensory (proprioceptive) satisfaction, brought about by the “massage” caused by the sound waves the infant produces, vocalizations that stop if an adult appears.

Newborns show their ability to produce sounds early on, also by imitation, before they manage to produce real syllables (confused at times with similar sounds or pseudosyllables). This happens at around six to seven months. Contrary to what was claimed in earlier publications, recent studies say that real babbling begins towards the sixth month (Thurman, 1997; Trevarthen, 1999-2000) or the seventh month (Boysson-Bardies, 1999), when the vocal tract is able to produce syllables that respect the linguistic constraints of natural languages. Before this, from four months, infants start to produce quasi-consonantal sounds with vowels, similar to syllables in the spoken language and, therefore, commonly called babbling.

1.3 Leading to Song

We have seen how interactive communication between mother and infant benefits linguistic capacity as well as the sharing of emotions and social behaviour. After closely observing their baby daughter (Papousek and Papousek, 1981), Mechtild Papousek (1995) studied the vocal production of infants from two to 15 months during interactions with their mothers. On the basis of the results of this and of other research, she reported several stages in the vocal production of infants: during the first month of life they produce simple sounds, and from the second month they produce more articulated and modulated sounds; during the next stage (from about four to six months) they play at exploring their own voice by producing a series of sounds that at first tend to be repetitive, then more varied, and then lead on to their first words at about one year old.

Early in this process there are traces of the appearance of two separate skills: one that leads to language and thought and the other that leads to song and the creative and imitative activity of vocal music. Both are closely linked to the affective (emotional) functions of the voice and communication.

At this point we ask ourselves: could music have the same potential in the musical field as it has in verbal language? If it is true that in order to learn a language well it is necessary for the linguistic model to be presented within a framework of interactive communication (Boysson-Bardies, 1999, p. 94), then is this also true for music? What happens if mother sings? If she tries to open an interactive dialogue by singing, does the newborn begin to “respond”? And, if so, what form do these responses take?

As we have said, newborns very soon distinguish melodic contours and speech rhythms, and this is all the more reason why they should be able to do the same with music, as its pitch and duration are organized in a more precise way.

At this point, perhaps we should clarify some of the terminology used. Whilst researchers of verbal communication use musical terms in a broad sense - for example, they speak of the melody of the mother’s speech to describe how her voice rises and falls as she speaks, in the study we are addressing here, the terms pitch, melody, rhythm, metre, etc. will be used in the strict sense to indicate the specific features of the musical system of the Western world.

Returning to the question just posed, we immediately reply that the ability of infants to distinguish verbal language from song and other kinds of sound appears quite early on, between the first and fourth months (Eimas et al., 1971). We should not forget that the auditory system is functional for three or four months before birth.

We can, therefore, surmise that a mother’s singing (or a father’s) could have, for the purposes of musical stimulation, the same effect as their speaking, and that the infant’s need to communicate could be equally satisfied with this form of “language” as long as the mother and father sing, for example, to interact with them, to attract their attention, to sooth them and to share different emotions.

Here we touch on a fundamental point concerning relationships and that is the human need for communication that cannot be satiated by verbal language. It is for this reason that every society has created other forms of symbolic communication. Even if music has generally taken on a less powerful structure than spoken language, the tonal system used by a large part of our music - a system that the psychologist Robert Francés considered to be “the musical mother language of the West” (1972), is structured with its own grammar and syntax (Baroni, Dalmonte and Jacoboni, 1999; Francés, 1972) that allow composers to convey meanings and emotions and for listeners to understand them (Meyer, 1956; Imberty, 1986).

If we look at the research conducted in this field, we notice that few researchers have asked what happens in the first year of life if the mother sings. One of the first to take a closer look and try to identify first signs of “singing” in newborns was Moog (1976). When studying the vocal sounds produced in the early months of life after birth, he identified the progressive presence of a certain assortment of sounds of varied pitch. He reported that the sounds produced towards the sixth to seventh month are similar to singing and they happen mostly when adults sing to the infants or let them listen to music. Moog calls this “musical babbling”.

Other researchers have shown how newborns prefer the song that their mother sings to them rather than songs in general, as the former are more expressive and emotionally intense, as well as being produced by their first human sound source. Researchers have demonstrated how babies show greater attention (by fixing their stare and reducing movements) if their mother sings rather than speaks. It seems, therefore, that the relationship that the mother (and also the father) establishes with the newborn through song is more intense and elicits a more emotional response than speech (Trehub and Nakata, 2001-2002).

The importance of this relationship is generally grasped through a mother’s intuition. Even if they do not feel that they sing well or have a great voice, mothers are still observed singing to their babies to calm them, entertain them, make them laugh and play, being (other-than-consciously) aware of the emotional role that their voice plays in the child’s experience (Street, 2003).

A newborn’s earliest vocalizations increase in variety and duration if the parents continue to encourage it. This is affirmed by Moog (1976), who continued to analyse the musical production of infants after the first few months, and by other researchers. In a study carried out in the United States at Harvard University, for example, nine children were followed up from the ages of one to seven. T...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half title
• Title
• Copy
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Disclaimer
• Foreword by Graham Welch
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: The Reasons for a Research Study
• Part I Musical Development
• Chapter 1 The Literature on Musical Development from 0 to 3 Years of Age
• Chapter 2 The inCanto Project
• Chapter 3 Procedures and Results
• Chapter 4 The Parents Have Their Say
• Part II From Research to Teaching Practice
• Chapter 5 Promoting Musical Development
• Chapter 6 Suggestions for Musical Activities
• Postludee
• Appendix of Melodies
• References
• List of Audio and Video Recordings
• Index