title: The effects of tempo and familiarity on children's affective interpretation of music.
abstract: When and how does one learn to associate emotion with music? This study attempted to address this issue by examining whether preschool children use tempo as a cue in determining whether a song is happy or sad. Instrumental versions of children's songs were played at different tempos to adults and children ages 3 to 5 years. Familiar and unfamiliar songs were used to examine whether familiarity affected children's identification of emotion in music. The results indicated that adults, 4 year olds and 5 year olds rated fast songs as significantly happier than slow songs. However, 3 year olds failed to rate fast songs differently than slow songs at above-chance levels. Familiarity did not significantly affect children's identification of happiness and sadness in music.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA. jasmine.mote@gmail.com
authors.forename: Jasmine
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Mote
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000328:Adult; D000339:Affect; D002675:Child, Preschool; D056348:Emotional Intelligence; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D008297:Male; D009146:Music / Q000523:psychology*; D002666:Psychology, Child; D021641:Recognition, Psychology