AIRS 3rd Annual Meeting: 2013

Title: Testing musical abilities of Estonian toddlers: Some preliminary results
Authors: Laura Välja (Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre), Marju Raju (Estonian
Academy of Music and Theatre), Jaan Ross (Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre)

Abstract

Introduction: AIRS test battery has originally been created in English for studying individuals
who predominantly originate from North America. Applying it cross-culturally is a challenging
task in a number of aspects because languages and cultures may differ from each other
significantly.
Method: In 2012, 43 Estonian children from a kindergarten in Tallinn have been tested with the
AIRS battery of singing skills. Their age varied between two and six years. 40 children were
native speakers of Estonian and three children native speakers of Russian. The group included
22 females and 21 males. Both video and audio recordings of all performances were obtained.
This study focuses predominantly on items 5 and 8 in the test battery, where the tasks were,
respectively, to sing a favorite song and to make a free musical composition to choice of a
picture.
Results: Item 8 in the test was more complicated to accomplish than item 5, and a number of
participants did not succeed with it. The children's favorite songs mostly include those from the
common repertory in contemporary Estonia, which they learn from the media, in the
kindergarten, or during extracurricular music lessons.
Discussion: In the typology of improvised songs from item 8, it seems productive to use a twodimensional space where one axis corresponds to the degree of spontaneity of performance and
another to how well the performance conforms to the Western tonality patterns. For example,
an internally rehearsed composition apparently exhibits little spontaneity, and a composition
which starts and ends with the tonic note exhibits significant conformity to the tonal music. The
tested participants seem to form clusters on such a space, which suggests that there may occur
strategic prototypes of action, such as (1) spontaneous and tonal, (2) spontaneous and nontonal, (3) pre-planned and tonal, and (4) pre-planned and non-tonal, in solving item 8 in the test.