Journal #1- Music Listening Preferences in Early Life: Infants' Responses to Accompanied Versus Unaccompanied Singing-Beatriz Ilari and Megha Sundara

The purpose of this study is to determine infants' listening preference between two versions of a song, unaccompanied and accompanied. The study tested groups of 5, 8, and 11 month year olds. In addition, gender, age, and listening time were also used as variables in the study. Studies have shown that from birth, infants have the ability to distinguish between and recall a wide variety of musical sounds. In fact, infants are able to develop mental representations of music and store them. In the case of infants, 'preference' does not mean that the infant has made a conscious decision that one piece of music is better than another. 'Preference' in the case of infants, simply means that the infant has a higher rate of attention and will listen to the piece longer. Voices, especially the maternal voice, are very important to infants, as they allow the child to formulate behavior and mood. Auditory preferences can also be seen in music without words. For instance, infants often prefer tonal over dissonant music. The overall goal in this study, is to provide educators and parents with information which will help them provide a more enriching and musically satisfying experience for infants. The unaccompanied version of the song was a vocal pentatonic song, "The Tea". The accompanied version contained the same vocals with various backing instrumentation. Both versions had the same tempo and pitch center. The results of the study show that infants listened much longer to the unaccompanied version rather than the accompanied version. One possible explanation for this result, is that infants have an inherent preference for the human voice. In addition, monophonic textures are often favored over polyphonic textures for their simplicity. These results, however, do not mean that babies can not enjoy polyphonic music.

I found the results of this study to be both reaffirming and thought-provoking. My original guess was that the infants would prefer the unaccompanied song over the accompanied. This turned out to be correct. Even though I felt this to be true, I was not sure of the reasoning behind it. For instance, it makes sense that babies preferred the unaccompanied version of the song, because voice is such an innate part of human existence. I feel as if the study was well thought out and used both the correct materials and sources to gain valid results. However, I feel as if the study could be improved in a few ways. Firstly, I think it would be interesting to incorporate different styles of music into the study. In addition, it would be thought-provoking to use recordings with both a boy's voice and a girl's voice. I also feel that the data in the survey would be more sound and valid if the study had been completed with different infants multiple times.