Music and social interaction in the developing child

• In Event: 3-221 - The social and emotional significance of early shared musical experiences

Integrative Statement

Music is an integral part of human experience, serving throughout life as an effective medium for social and emotional communication. Of particular interest is the impact of music on developing children, and its relation to the cognitive, social and emotional capacities available at particular stages of development. Recent work has examined the effects of synchronized movement, an essential component of musical interaction, on the social behavior of children of various age groups, and has shown a remarkable influence of even brief episodes of synchronous interaction on young children’s propensity to exhibit enhanced prosocial behavior. Our own studies have shown a significant positive effect of joint synchronous movement on subsequent performance of collaborative tasks in 4-year-old children. Interestingly, children who had undergone synchrony experience, not only performed the joint tasks more quickly, but also appeared to signal their intentions one to the other more saliently, a behavior that was associated with better task performance. In a subsequent study comprising 4-year-old participants, we asked whether interpersonal signaling might play a role already during the synchronization phase. Beyond the perception of moving bodies, synchronous interaction might entail implicit self-other signaling, such as conveyed through eye contact, facial expressions and body language. Such cues that pass between participants could underpin the social impact of synchronous experience. In order to test this possibility, we eliminated possible self-other signaling by placing a large barrier between the two moving participants. The barrier was either transparent (full view of partner) for the control condition or translucent (blurred silhouette of partner) for the signaling eliminated condition. If the effects of synchrony on collaboration remain the same even after self-other signaling is eliminated, then this should rule out self-other signaling as mediating the effects of synchrony on social behavior. Our data indeed indicated that the 4-year-old children performed the collaborative joint tasks equally well under both conditions, and both groups outperformed an additional, asynchrony group. These results point at a fundamental movement perception mechanism as underlying the impact of synchrony on collaboration. This study is first to examine the mechanism of induction during children’s synchrony experience, and is expected to prompt further investigation into the precise mechanisms that link between joint synchrony experience and the social behaviors that it elicits.

Authors

• Tal-Chen Rabinowitch, University of Haifa
  Presenting Author

• Andrew Meltzoff, University of Washington
  Non-Presenting Author