AIRS 4th Annual Meeting: 2012

Title: The Development of Singing Perception and its Relationship to Cognitive Development in
Three Cohorts of Children Aged 5 to 9 Years
Authors: Amy Fancourt (Goldsmiths, University of London), Christine D. Tsang (Huron
University College at Western)

Abstract

Introduction: Berkowska and Dalla Bella (2009) have proposed a vocal-sensorimotor loop model
of singing in which auditory pitch information is mapped onto vocal-motor movements during
singing. This vocal sensorimotor loop model suggests that memory, motor skill, perception and
feedback all contribute to singing ability. Many components of the vocal sensorimotor loop
begin to develop during infancy, but take a long time to reach maturity (Tsang, Friendly &
Trainor, 2011). When considering the development of the sensorimotor loop model of singing, it
is important to consider how the ongoing maturation of cognitive abilities may interact with
different components of the model. This pilot study focused on the role of perception in the
development of singing and investigated the interplay between perception, language and
cognitive ability in 3 groups of 5-9 year old children across 3 testing sites in the UK and Canada.
Method: Perception was measured using the ‘Vocal Auditory Motor Development Assessment’
(VAMDA). Perception was measured in two ways: 1. Ability to discriminate between two short
melodies (synthesized ‘ba’ female voice). 2. Ability to detect a small pitch interval change (from
200 cents to 5 cents). The Digit Span subtest of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children
(WISC) was used to assess short term/working memory and The British Picture Vocabulary
Scales (BPVS) were used to assess receptive vocabulary.
Results: In all groups, there was a significant correlation between raw score on the digit span
task and performance on the melody discrimination task, r (22) = .449, p<.05 (UK sample), r (24)
=.510, p<.05 (Canadian sample). There was a significant correlation between raw vocabulary
scores and performance on the pitch interval discrimination task, r (22) = .530, p<.05 (UK), r (24)
=. 318, p<0.05 (Canada).
Discussion: The findings support the predictions of the sensorimotor loop model (Berkowska &
Dala Bella, 2009) and show that cognitive and language ability interact with the capacity to
perceive and discriminate changes in pitch and melody. The next step is to investigate how

 cognitive, language and musical perceptual ability may relate to pitch accuracy in singing
production.