Name:Molly, Malaby

School/Affiliation:Bucknell University

Co-Authors:Haley Kragness and Andrea Halpern

Virtual or In-person:Virtual

Abstract:

Adults’ musical expectations have been extensively studied, but less is known about how these expectations develop in children. In previous studies of children’s tonal expectations, children were asked to identify if melodies sounded “good” or “bad”, or to identify which of two melodies should “win a prize”. However, melodic violations can be pleasant or unpleasant. The present study aimed to examine children’s surprisal judgments of melodic violations. We hypothesized that children would rate phrase-final notes violating Western musical structure as more surprising than non-violating notes, implying an understanding of tonality.

Seventy-one children participated in a remote experiment using a novel emoji-based surprise rating scale. They rated the surprise level of final notes in melodies that either violated or adhered to Western tonal expectations. A subset of 39 children passed control trials testing their understanding of the task.

Analysis of this subset revealed that children rated melodic violations as significantly more surprising than non-violations. These findings are consistent with previous studies suggesting early school-aged children have begun developing Western tonal expectations. While this study provides a novel way to explore the development of tonal expectations, future research should investigate potential gradations in children’s judgments. Specifically, examining whether children’s ratings differentiate between moderately and highly surprising melodic events could offer a more nuanced understanding of their developing tonal awareness. Other future directions could include the influence of factors such as musical exposure, formal training, and family attitudes on the surprisal reaction and could also be extended to the development of temporal expectations.