Music, Education, and the Development of Pitch Perception: The Role of Context, Age and Musical Experience

Abstract

This paper presents the results of an investigation into children's music listening capabilities with respect to musical pitch, focusing on the effects of types of materials presented in a short-term listening situation using the probe-note methodology. Results from a listening task administered to children of different levels of musical experience aged between 6 and 16 illustrate that children's capabilities exceeded those typically ascribed to them by music educators and psychologists. In particular, children appeared more sensitive to higher-order musical features such as interval content than to more surface features such as contour, and these sensitivities increased with age and experience. Furthermore, the distinction between musicians and non-musicians typically drawn in music- psychological research was found to be insufficient in characterising the range of children's perceptual behaviours. Evidence was also found to support the reliability of responses given in short-term listening situations.