Term
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Definition
prenatal infant is exposed to sounds of the mother and her environment
-at 25 weeks the sense organs and CNS start to mature, so the infant can hear muffled sounds- but they are "low pass filtered"- i.e. high frequencies taken out
- the speech isn't intelligible but its musical properties are
-- we know they can hear these noises because we can monitor heart race responses and motor responses
-they can recognize mom's voice
able to process and remember musical patterns by 3rd trimester - they exhibit changes in movement when played a melody they already heard earlier
-these are really responses to sound, and not music as infants can't synchronize dance with music until age 2 |
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Term
| habituation/dishabituation technique in infants |
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Definition
habituation phase- present infant with a preset number of exposures to a stimulus (i.e. play a meoldy 10 times)
--infant looks toward stimulus, and eventually habituates to it, and 'gets bored' and stops looking
--then infant is presented test stimuli (i.e. a different melody)
dishabituation- occurs if the infant perceives a difference between the original and test stimulus (measured through whether or not the infant starts looking at the new stimulus) |
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Term
| preferential looking technique |
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Definition
-Present two stimuli simultaneously, or sequentially
-Measure differences in attention to two different stimuli
-Sometimes proceeded by a familiarization phase
-Difference in attention between the two stimuli indicates perceived differences |
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Term
| what can infants perceive/ remember at birth? |
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Definition
-consonance vs. dissonance
-melodic contour
-scale structure
-phrasing |
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Term
| consonance vs. dissonance present at birth |
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Definition
-infants can perceive this at birth
--non human animals can discriminate this too, probably due to the physiology of the cochlea and the 'critical band' for fundamental and overtone frequencies
-human infants prefer consonance over dissonance, but this isn't true for all animals, but its not clear why
--this does explain why consonance appears cross culturally |
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Term
| melodic contour present at birth |
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Definition
(the up/down changes in pitch over time)- infants can do this at birth because its a simpler, coarser analysis of sound than pitch intervals
-its also important for perceiving emotional content of speech (ex. motherese) |
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Term
| scale structure present at birth |
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Definition
-most scales have different sized steps between consecutive notes, such scales are easier for 9 month olds to process and represent
-this is an advantage because it allows pitches to be differentiated and play different roles
-this is not due to familiarity because they perform equally well with major and other unequal step scales
-with help of nurture, infants also begin to process and represent scales from their own culture more easily |
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Term
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Definition
in a study- six month infants preferred musical phrases segmented at phrase boundaries
- these ended in relative long notes and downward pitch contours
-similar structure for speech phrases and other auditory signals (i.e. wind) |
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Term
| what can't infants perceive/ remember at birth? |
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Definition
-relative pitch
-rhythm
-harmony and key |
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Term
| why can't infants perceive rhythm at birth? |
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Definition
this ability is increased with experince, usually can discriminate rhythms at 2 months
-at 7 months, can categorize rhythms into meters
-at 9 months can use metric structure to perceive timing errors
-enculturation begins early- infants begin to be more sensitive to western rhythms after 6 months (assuming they're raised in western culture) |
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Term
| why can't infants perceive relative pitch at birth? |
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Definition
| need to be sensitive to precise pitch intervals (more than contour) to recognize melodies- this develops with experience -changes from consonant relative pitch intervals are perceived earlier than changes from dissonant ones -adults do better with consonant interval pitch changes too - this is probably because consonant intervals occur most frequently in western melodies |
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Term
| why can't infants perceive harmony and key at birth? |
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Definition
-this ability only increases with experience
- 9 month olds can detect changes in a tonal melody (one in a key) more easily than change in an atonal one
-5 year olds can detect a one semitone change that violated both harmony (simultaneous notes) and key (successive notes)
7 year olds detected 2 semi tone changes that violated harmony but not key
-sensitive to key first (5 years old) and then to harmony (7 years old) |
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Term
| musical abilities present at birth |
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Definition
-consonance vs. dissonance
-melodic contour
-scale structure
-phrasing |
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Term
| musical abilities present at birth |
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Definition
-consonance vs. dissonance
-melodic contour
-scale structure
-phrasing |
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Term
| musical abilities absent at birth |
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Definition
-relative pitch
-rhythm
- harmony & key |
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