Musical Beginnings Origins and Development of Musical Competence

by Deliege, Irene; Sloboda, John

• ISBN13: 9780198523338
• ISBN10: 0198523335
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1996-04-18
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

From where, and by what mechanisms, does an individual's musical abilityoriginate? This is a subject of major interest both to developmental and musicpsychologists, heightened by the recent research into prenatal perception ofsound. This timely volume brings together authoritative reviews on centralissues, beginning with prenatal auditory experience, through infancy and earlychildhood. The chapters chart the developmental progress with reference to thechild's changing environment: from the uterus, through the intense andsemi-exclusive mother-baby bond, to the wider contexts provided by the family,school, and society at large. The book provides the most up-to-date integrationof developmental and music psychology.

Table of Contents

List of contributors	p. xv
The Fetal Stage
Prenatal auditory experience	p. 3
Introduction	p. 3
The fetal sound environment	p. 4
Maternal background noise	p. 4
In utero attenuation of auditory stimuli	p. 5
Differentiation of speech from the background noise	p. 7
Sound isolation of the fetus	p. 8
Auditory system maturation	p. 8
Evidence of prenatal auditory functioning	p. 10
Auditory evoked potentials	p. 10
Neurochemical responses: local cerebral (14-C) 2-deoxyglucose (2-DG) uptake	p. 11
Behavioural studies	p. 11
Consequences of auditory prenatal experience	p. 17
Prenatal consequences of sound exposure	p. 17
Postnatal effects of prenatal sound exposure	p. 20
Conclusion	p. 24
Acknowledgements	p. 25
References	p. 25
From the Baby to the Infant
Musicality in infancy research: biological and cultural origins of early musicality	p. 37
Introduction: perspectives of infancy research	p. 37
Early musicality and human communication	p. 39
Early musicality and the human mind	p. 45
Early musicality and human culture	p. 49
Acknowledgments	p. 51
References	p. 51
Infants' auditory sensitivity towards acoustic parameters of speech and music	p. 56
Introduction	p. 56
Auditory sensitivity in infants	p. 57
Methods	p. 58
Absolute thresholds	p. 60
Masked thresholds	p. 62
Frequency discrimination	p. 64
Pitch discrimination	p. 66
Timbre discrimination	p. 67
Summary	p. 68
Auditory grouping and segregation processes	p. 70
Auditory stream segregation	p. 71
Duration illusion	p. 74
Implications for pattern perception in speech and music	p. 76
References	p. 81
Intuitive parenting: a hidden source of musical stimulation in infancy	p. 88
Introduction	p. 88
Predispositions for music in human infants	p. 88
Predispositions for music education in parents	p. 89
Musical elements in preverbal communication: the Papouseks' approach to the earliest stages of musical stimulation	p. 90
Infant-directed speech: a relevant source of musical stimulation	p. 92
Functional significance of infant-directed melodies in speech	p. 94
Beyond melodic contours: rhythm and dynamics	p. 100
Early rhythmic stimulation	p. 101
The musical structure of interactional games	p. 102
Precursors of singing in infants' preverbal vocal development	p. 103
Creative play with vocal sounds	p. 104
From common roots to diverging specializations	p. 105
Concluding remarks	p. 107
References	p. 108
Time and Childhood
The development of the perception of time and temporal regulation of action in infants and children	p. 115
Time and rhythms in infants	p. 115
Motor rhythms and temporal regulations of behaviour	p. 116
The perception and processing of temporal information	p. 119
Enacted time and represented time in children	p. 129
The development of representations of the temporal structure of events	p. 129
Temporal regulations of action: from conditioned regulation to cognitive regulation	p. 131
Time as a quantifiable dimension and learning to measure time	p. 135
Synchronization of perceived and produced sequences	p. 136
References	p. 138
School Age
The development of artistic and musical competence	p. 145
Introduction	p. 145
Theoretical and practical issues	p. 146
The social and educational context of musical competence	p. 146
Normative and expert development	p. 150
Does artistic development proceed in stages?	p. 151
Musical competence and artistic development	p. 153
The course of artistic and musical development	p. 154
The sensorimotor phase	p. 155
The figural phase	p. 159
The schematic phase	p. 162
The rule systems phase	p. 164
The professional phase	p. 165
Conclusion	p. 167
Acknowledgements	p. 168
References	p. 168
The young performing musician	p. 171
Introduction	p. 171
The characteristics of expert musical performance	p. 172
Conditions for development of performance skill	p. 176
The study of young performing musicians	p. 178
Can expressivity be learned or practised?	p. 184
References	p. 187
Linguistic and musical development in preschool and school-age children	p. 191
Theoretical comments on problems concerning the development of language and music	p. 191
Competence and equilibration	p. 191
Modularity and grammar	p. 193
Integration processes and the development of the semiotic function	p. 194
Language, thought, and operational logic	p. 196
The concept of grammar in music theory	p. 197
Musical grammar and modularity	p. 197
Experimental facts and theoretical doubts	p. 198
Psychological implications of the generative theory of tonal music	p. 199
An evolutionary musical grammar of children: a key concept for research into the cognitive psychology of development	p. 201
The concept of evolutionary grammar	p. 201
Pitch and duration	p. 202
A potential model of an evolutionary grammar of melodic structures in children	p. 203
The development of tonal competence at school age	p. 207
The importance of dynamic aspects in the organization of melodic sequences	p. 207
The origin of the tonic-dominant-tonic relationship	p. 209
Conclusion	p. 211
References	p. 211
Index	p. 215
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