DEVELOPMENT OF PERCEPTION OF THE UNITY OF MUSICAL EVENTS

Infants' and young children's perception of the unity of musical event s was investigated in three studies. In the first two, children watche d video displays of two musicians playing different musical instrument s side by side in synchrony, and heard a soundtrack in synchrony with both instruments but specific to one. The children judged which instru ment was producing the music they heard. Three- to 4-year-olds differe ntiated instruments from different families but not instruments from t he same family. Five- to 7-year-olds additionally differentiated instr ument pairs differing in size and pitch range (e.g., violin, cello). I n the third study, infants were presented some of the same musical eve nts in order to assess whether specific experience with the instrument s is necessary for perceiving the unity of musical events. Looking tim es revealed that 7- to 9-month-olds detected the correspondence of the sight and sound of some musical instruments. Specific experience with a variety of instruments is evidently not necessary for detecting cor respondences of audible and visible properties and for differentiating instruments from different families.