This Article Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: 0305735607076445v1 35/4/629    most recent References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Bruce Morton, J. Articles by Trehub, S. E. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Children's judgements of emotion in song

UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO, CANADA, bmorton3{at}uwo.ca

Sandra E. Trehub

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO AT MISSISSAUGA, CANADA

Songs convey emotion by means of expressive performance cues (e.g. pitch level, tempo, vocal tone) and lyrics. Although children can interpret both types of cues, it is unclear whether they would focus on performance cues or salient verbal cues when judging the feelings of a singer. To investigate this question, we had 5- to 10-year-old children and adults listen to song fragments that combined emotive performance cues with meaningless syllables or with lyrics that had emotional implications. In both cases, listeners were asked to judge the singer's feelings from the sound of her voice. In the context of meaningless lyrics, children and adults successfully judged the singer's feelings from performance cues. When the lyrics were emotive, adults reliably judged the singer's feelings from performance cues, but children based their judgements on the lyrics. These findings have implications for children's interpretation of vocal emotion in general and sung performances in particular.

Key Words: development • music • perception • songs • vocal emotion

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?