Pitch Labels with Single and Multiple Meanings: A Study with French-Speaking Children

Abstract

It has been suggested that English-speaking children have difficulty labeling pitch because of the multiple connotations of the terms “high” and “low.” In this study, we examined whether the use of single or multiple-meaning labels affects young children's identification of pitch changes. French-speaking children received instruction on the use of the single-meaning terms aigu and grave (which as a pair of opposite terms is only used to label high and low sounds) or the multiple-meaning words haut and bas (which as its English counterparts“high” and “low” are used to label pitch, space, and intensity). Children were asked to describe the instructor's high and low voice, strike a drum whenever they heard a two-octave pitch change in a melody, and label the melody's high and low fragments. Children identified most of the pitch changes of the melody and used the newly learned labels with a high degree of accuracy. Those who were taught the single-meaning terms labeled high and low stimuli more correctly than did those who were taught the multiple-meaning terms.