Native and non‐native music perception by children Free

The development of culturally specific perceptual knowledge for music was investigated. Using a background/contrast paradigm originally developed for speech perception [Eilers et al., J. Speech Hear. Res. 20, 766–780 (1977)], Western 10–13 year olds and adults were tested in detection of mistunings in melodies based on native Western major and Western minor scales and a non‐native Javanese pelog scale. Each age group was divided equally into musically inexperienced and musical subjects. The musically inexperienced adults had a perceptual bias for the melodies based on their native scales, but the adult musicians did not appear to share this bias, since they were able to generalize their knowledge of Western scales to the perception of a melody based on the Javanese scale. In contrast to the adults, the musician 10–13 yeat olds had a perceptual bias for the melodies based on Western scales, and the nonmusician 10–13 year olds did not share this bias. The musically inexperienced adults' performance was significantly better than that of the musically inexperienced children on both the Western and Javanese scales, and the same was true for the musician adults and children, indicating development of perceptual ability that is independent of musical training. Perception of Western mistunings was significantly related to the childrens' total years of musical experience and the amount of time devoted to practicing a musical instrument or voice. [Work supported by the American Physchological Association.]