Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University.
Dev Psychol. 2018 May;54(5):842-856. doi: 10.1037/dev0000405. Epub 2018 Jan 22.
Proper segmentation of auditory streams is essential for understanding music. Many cues, including meter, melodic contour, and harmony, influence adults' perception of musical phrase boundaries. To date, no studies have examined young children's musical grouping in a production task. We used a musical self-pacing method to investigate (1) whether dwell times index young children's musical phrase grouping and, if so, (2) whether children dwell longer on phrase boundaries defined by harmonic cues specifically. In Experiment 1, we asked 3-year-old children to self-pace through chord progressions from Bach chorales (sequences in which metrical, harmonic, and melodic contour grouping cues aligned) by pressing a computer key to present each chord in the sequence. Participants dwelled longer on chords in the 8th position, which corresponded to phrase endings. In Experiment 2, we tested 3-, 4-, and 7-year-old children's sensitivity to harmonic cues to phrase grouping when metrical regularity cues and melodic contour cues were misaligned with the harmonic phrase boundaries. In this case, 7 and 4 year olds but not 3 year olds dwelled longer on harmonic phrase boundaries, suggesting that the influence of harmonic cues on phrase boundary perception develops substantially between 3 and 4 years of age in Western children. Overall, we show that the musical dwell time method is child-friendly and can be used to investigate various aspects of young children's musical understanding, including phrase grouping and harmonic knowledge. (PsycINFO Database Record
适当的听觉流分割对于理解音乐至关重要。许多线索，包括节奏、旋律轮廓和和声，都会影响成年人对音乐乐句边界的感知。迄今为止，还没有研究在产生任务中检查幼儿的音乐分组。我们使用音乐自我定时方法来研究（1）停顿时间是否可以指示幼儿的音乐乐句分组，如果是，（2）儿童是否会在特定的和声线索定义的乐句边界上停留更长时间。在实验 1 中，我们要求 3 岁儿童通过按下计算机键来自我定时巴赫众赞歌的和弦进行（在这些序列中，节奏、和声和旋律轮廓分组线索一致），以呈现序列中的每个和弦。参与者在第 8 位上的和弦上停留的时间更长，这与乐句结束相对应。在实验 2 中，我们测试了 3、4 和 7 岁儿童在节奏规律性线索和旋律轮廓线索与和声乐句边界不一致时对和声线索进行乐句分组的敏感性。在这种情况下，7 岁和 4 岁儿童而不是 3 岁儿童在和声乐句边界上停留的时间更长，这表明在西方儿童中，和声线索对乐句边界感知的影响在 3 到 4 岁之间有了很大的发展。总体而言，我们表明音乐停顿时间方法对儿童友好，可用于研究幼儿音乐理解的各个方面，包括乐句分组和和声知识。
