A Study of Infant Musical Productivity

Abstract

Detailed information on the early musical responses and productivity of normal children prior to 2 years of age is notably absent, except for such prodigies as Mozart. In contrast, other areas of child development such as language acquisition have been widely studied. This void led to the present exploratory study of three children of three contrasting musical backgrounds. One family included parents who were professional musicians, one family had parents who were musically oriented but not musicians by profession, and a third family had parents who were not musically oriented. The study involved the observation of each child in relevant family settings over a period from birth to 2 years of age and provided an earlier period of observation (0–12 months), more family context data, and more child performance data than the other studies presently in the literature (McKernon, 1979; Holahan, Chapter 5, this volume) of children from 1 to 2 1/2 years.