Running in circles or moving along lines: Conceptualization of musical elements in sighted and blind children

Abstract

In the present study, we address the perceptual basis for developing abstract concepts by investigating if there are any differences in the way sighted and blind 10-year-olds conceptualize some basic musical relations. Thirty-four sighted and nine blind US elementary school students (seven congenitally blind) were exposed to 10 diametrically-opposed musical stimuli (a high and low tone, a quick and slow succession of pitches, a major and minor chord, and so on) and asked to verbally describe what the first and what the second part of the sequence sounded like. Upon transcription, their verbalizations were classified into higher-order conceptual categories. Distributions of responses so grouped were then compared. Results support the theoretical position that metaphorization is the principal mechanism in conceptualizing musical elements, and suggest a preference for visuo-spatial descriptions of the sequences. While sighted children’s verbalizations seemed more referential and took less time to produce overall, the conceptual categories in the two groups reveal no differences. We suggest three possible explanations for this result: (1) the studied concepts might be more abstractly spatial, rather than visually-grounded, for both populations; (2) the concepts might derive from visuo-spatial stimulation for the sighted, and more generally embodied experience in the blind, which however produces the same linguistic output; (3) the concepts might be visuo-spatial in the sighted, and the blind could have adopted the terminology upon hearing it from the sighted, irrespective of their own sensory experience.