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Psychology of Music
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Children's judgements of emotion in song

J. Bruce Morton

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

This version was published on October 1, 2007

Psychology of Music, Vol. 35, No. 4, 629-639 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0305735607076445
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