auditory development and music cognition

Question 1

what is music cognition?

Answer 1

• the study of the abilities and processes required to engage with musical stimuli
• interdisciplinary field, incorporating elements of psychology, comp sci, neuroscience, music

Question 2

why is it important to use music to study auditory development?

Answer 2

1. similarity to language: both abilities are correlated meaning we can learn about language by studying music and vice versa
2. convenience: an alternate window into study of auditory cognition
3. evolution: music is innate, universal, and adaptive

Question 3

describe the parts of the ear in the process of hearing

Answer 3

• outer and middle ear: vibrations in the world creates a wave that enters the auditory canal, causing the eardrum to vibrate and triggering vibrations in 3 bones
• inner ear: soundwaves travel to cochlea where they are transduced into electrical signals
• central nervous system: electrical signals travel along the auditory nerve, through the brainstem, and into the primary auditory cortex in the left and right temporal lobes

Question 4

what is pitch?

Answer 4

• describes perception of frequency of a wave
• more waves = higher frequency = higher pitch
• measured in Hz

Question 5

what is prosody?

Answer 5

• how we use melody in speech to convey meaning and emotion
• key part of social communication

Question 6

what is beat?

Answer 6

our perception of evenly spaced points in a sequence, sometimes felt as a pulse

Question 7

what is rhythm?

Answer 7

full pattern of temporal intervals in a sequence

Question 8

do fetuses hear high or low frequency sounds while in the womb? why?

Answer 8

• low frequency
• due to the development of cells in the cochlea and the auditory cortex; happens in a tonotopic manner, meaning each sound has its place, and the earliest cells to develop respond to low frequencies

Question 9

when the mother is silent, what are the most prominent sound fetuses hear in the womb?

Answer 9

1. bowel sounds
2. maternal heartbeat
3. fetal heartbeat

Question 10

what is the timeline for auditory development?

Answer 10

• first 20 weeks of pregnancy: fetus in unresponsive to sound since soundwaves cannot be transduced into electrical signals due to immaturity of cochlea
• at 20 weeks, neural pathway to auditory cortex becomes functional and development continues up to 2 years after birth
• 20-25 weeks: first responses to sound can be recorded via ultrasound
• 35 weeks: cochlear development is mature
• 40 weeks (birth): basic auditory abilities are functional

Question 11

what are the basic auditory abilities present at birth?

Answer 11

• localization: ability to perceive the spacial location of a sound source
• identification: ability to perceive discrete speech sounds (phonemes; eg. ka vs ta)
• discrimination: ability to hear differences between sounds

Question 12

why are babies worse at sound localization than adults?

Answer 12

their heads are smaller

Question 13

what is infants’ pitch perception like?

Answer 13

• newborns can discriminate between a wide range of pitches
• this range gets narrower as children get older; perceptual narrowing; due to attachment optimization (optimally sensitive to pitches emitted by caregivers) and language acquisition (range decreases when unnecessary pitches are not used)
• pitch is used by parents to influence infant attachment, hence baby talk

Question 14

what is the concern with premature babies’ auditory development? how can this be combatted?

Answer 14

• pre-term infants do not experience gradual transition from low to high frequency auditory processing
• overexposure to high frequency sounds (eg. hospital noises) and underexposure to low frequency sounds (uterine sounds) can be toxic to the development of the auditory cortex
• it can be beneficial to expose premies to primarily low-frequency sounds after birth to evoke auditory plasticity

Question 15

what is melody discrimination ability? when does it reach adult levels?

Answer 15

• measures ability to detect differences in melodies and their properties (interval, contour, timbre, etc)
• reaches adult levels by age 10-11

Question 16

when does singing ability plateau? what influences singing ability in adolescence?

Answer 16

• plateaus by age 12
• can be influenced by musical training, puberty, shyness, and musical listening

Question 17

what is absolute pitch? why is it important to study?

Answer 17

• aka perfect pitch
• the ability to sing, name, or identify a pitch without reference to another pitch
• provides evidence of critical period in auditory development, since you must be (a) born with it AND (b) begin training before 11 years old

Question 18

when does beat perception emerge in children?

Answer 18

age 5, at which point they can detect beat misalignment for culturally familiar rhythms

Question 19

what are synchronization tasks? at what age does synchronization ability emerge?

Answer 19

• measures the ability to move in time with an external stimulus; engages multiple regions of the brain
• emerges by age 4, though only to a steady beat rather than a complicated rhythmic sequence
• rhythmic abilities vary by cultural familiarity

Question 20

at what age can children perceive musical emotion? how does this compare to recognizing perceived emotion in speech

Answer 20

• age 3-5: can recognize happy vs sad music (though better at happy)
• age 11: recognition of happy and sad music reaches adult levels, though even adolescents can have trouble recognizing fear and anger in music
• children recognize emotion in music just as well as in speech

Question 21

at what age can children feel musical emotion? how can we tell?

Answer 21

• by age 1, 90% of infants move to music, but not synchronized
• musical movements are often accompanied by smiling and laughter–evidence that children feel a pleasurable urge to move to music

Question 22

what is groove?

Answer 22

• drives the urge to move to music
• groove is most strongly felt with medium levels of syncopation
• high-groove music is associated with more movement and better timing accuracy, as well as higher pleasure and reward (in adults)
• however, most children express joy regardless of level of groove in the music they are dancing to