No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the author.
Antecedents of the Temporal Arts in Early Mother-Infant Interaction
Abstract
The book can be viewed as representing the birth of evolutionary biomusicology.
What biological and cognitive forces have shaped humankind's musical behavior and the rich global repertoire of musical structures? What is music for, and why does every human culture have it? What are the universal features of music and musical behavior across cultures? In this groundbreaking book, musicologists, biologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, ethologists, and linguists come together for the first time to examine these and related issues. The book can be viewed as representing the birth of evolutionary biomusicology—the study of which will contribute greatly to our understanding of the evolutionary precursors of human music, the evolution of the hominid vocal tract, localization of brain function, the structure of acoustic-communication signals, symbolic gesture, emotional manipulation through sound, self-expression, creativity, the human affinity for the spiritual, and the human attachment to music itself.
Contributors Simha Arom, Derek Bickerton, Steven Brown, Ellen Dissanayake, Dean Falk, David W. Frayer, Walter Freeman, Thomas Geissmann, Marc D. Hauser, Michel Imberty, Harry Jerison, Drago Kunej, François-Bernard Mâche, Peter Marler, Björn Merker, Geoffrey Miller, Jean Molino, Bruno Nettl, Chris Nicolay, Katharine Payne, Bruce Richman, Peter J.B. Slater, Peter Todd, Sandra Trehub, Ivan Turk, Maria Ujhelyi, Nils L. Wallin, Carol Whaling
Bradford Books imprint
... Traditionally, the theoretical debate around the evolution of musicality has revolved much around whether musicality is an adaptation, that is, whether it has evolved in response to selective pressures from the socioecological environment of our ancestors and thus fulfilled important adaptive functions for the species (e.g., Fitch, 2006;Huron, 2012). Alternative proposals are that musicality is an exaptation (i.e., a trait originally lacking adaptive benefits but later co-opted in the service of an adaptive function), a spandrel (i.e., a by-product of other adaptations), or a technology (e.g., Dissanayake 2000Dissanayake , 2009bFitch, 2006;Huron, 2001Huron, , 2012Kotz et al., 2018;Mithen, 2005;Patel, 2006). Several scholars have recently argued that such debates are counterproductive, because musicality is not a monolithic trait but encompasses a conglomerate of abilities with distinct adaptive benefits and evolutionary trajectories (e.g., Fitch, 2011;Kotz et al., 2018;Mithen, 2005;Trainor, 2018). ...
... Theories of mother-infant interaction as the primordial context of musicality focus primarily on vocal behavior and emphasize two putative adaptive functions that may explain why hominin vocalizations acquired music-like features: mother-infant bonding (Dissanayake, 2000(Dissanayake, , 2009bMithen, 2005) and credible signaling of parental attention (Mehr & Krasnow, 2017;Mehr et al., 2021). ...
... According to the mother-infant bonding theory (e.g., Dissanayake 2000Dissanayake , 2009b, music-like vocalizing stems from affiliative signals that in mother-infant interaction were modified through a process of ritualization. Borrowed from the field of animal acoustic communication, the notion of ritualization refers to a process by which instrumental behaviors evolve into communicative signals through gradual changes toward increased formalization, repetition, and exaggeration (Grammer & Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1990;Watanabe & Smuts, 1999). ...
There has recently been a growing interest in investigating rhythm cognition and behavior in nonhuman animals as a way of tracking the evolutionary origins of human musicality – i.e., the ability to perceive, enjoy and produce music. During the last two decades, there has been an explosion of theoretical proposals aimed at explaining why and how humans have evolved into musical beings, and the empirical comparative research has also gained momentum. In this paper, we focus on the rhythmic component of musicality, and review functional and mechanistic theoretical proposals concerning putative prerequisites for perceiving and producing rhythmic structures similar to those encountered in music. For each theoretical proposal we also review supporting and contradictory empirical findings. To acknowledge that the evolutionary study of musicality requires an interdisciplinary approach, our review strives to cover perspectives and findings from as many disciplines as possible. We conclude with a research agenda that highlights relevant, yet thus far neglected topics in the comparative and evolutionary study of rhythm cognition. Specifically, we call for a widened research focus that will include additional rhythmic abilities besides entrainment, additional channels of perception and production besides the auditory and vocal ones, and a systematic focus on the functional contexts in which rhythmic signals spontaneously occur. With this expanded focus, and drawing from systematic observation and experimentation anchored in multiple disciplines, animal research is bound to generate many important insights into the adaptive pressures that forged the component abilities of human rhythm cognition and their (socio)cognitive and (neuro)biological underpinnings.
... The rationale behind this was based on findings that lullabies are ubiquitous and cross-culturally recognizable [17,44,45] and arguably evolutionarily important (e.g. [46,47]), hence a more 'natural' (and universal) kind of singing than the pop and operatic styles. On the other hand, we expected to find more idiosyncratic taste for operatic singing, as the least 'natural' kind of singing of the three (that is, related to a very specific technique, and appreciated by a very specific audience). ...
... We conducted the same exploratory analysis for MM1 agreement for pop performances in relation to participants' declared musical preferences for the pop musical genre. According to the musical preferences questionnaire, 47 ...
Voice preferences are an integral part of interpersonal interactions and shape how people connect with each other. While a large number of studies have investigated the mechanisms behind (speaking) voice attractiveness, very little research was dedicated to other types of vocalizations. In this Registered Report, we proposed to investigate voice preferences with an integrative approach. To this end, we used a newly recorded and validated stimulus set of contrasting vocalizations by 22 highly trained female singers speaking and singing the same material (in Brazilian Portuguese) in contrasting styles (sung as a lullaby, as a pop song or as an opera aria; and spoken aloud as if directed to an adult audience and as if directed to an infant). We asked 62 participants to rate these vocalizations in terms of how much they liked them; and we compared the amount of shared taste (that is, how much participants agreed in their preferences) across styles. We found highly idiosyncratic preferences across all styles. Our predictions concerning shared taste were not confirmed: although shared taste was higher for lullaby than for pop singing, it was unexpectedly higher for operatic than pop singing, and higher for infant-directed than adult-directed speech. Conversely, our prediction of limited consistency in average preferences for some singers across styles was confirmed, contradicting sexual selection-based ideas of singing and speaking as ‘backup’ signals of individual fitness. Our findings draw attention to the role of individual differences in voice preferences and highlight the need for a broader approach to understanding the underlying mechanisms of voice preferences. Stage 1 recommendation and review history: https://rr.peercommunityin.org/articles/rec?id=357. Stage 2 recommendation and review history: https://rr.peercommunityin.org/articles/rec?id=802.
... In trying to develop this, I have followed the path suggested in cultural psychology (see Vygotsky, 1978;Cole, 1996), where evolutionary perspectives (phylogeny), cultural history, and the development of the individual (ontogeny) are seen in relationship. Evolutionary perspectives on music have been vitalized recently due to developments in biomusicology (Wallin, Merker & Brown, 2000), and I fi nd Ellen Dissanayake's (2000Dissanayake's ( , 2001 concept of protomusicality central. Dissanayake suggests that the evolution of the species has furnished human beings with a (biologically based) capacity for communication through sounds and movements. ...
... In phylogeny, human sensitivity and interest for sound has evolved, a fact that to some degree may support the idea of using music as direct means in therapy. Dissanayake's (2000Dissanayake's ( , 2001 concept of protomusicality clarifi es, however, that humans' interest for sound and movement is linked to their capacity for communication, which is an argument for the relevance of a quite different notion, namely music as communicative medium. A simplifi ed description of this change in perspective is that what should be studied is not only how people react to music but also how they interact through music. ...
... 47 Some authors even believe that musical elements of mother-child communication generates the music that man, at a later age, uses and creates, i.e. the mother-child communication is an emotional prototype from which music later develops. 48 The old melodic (counterpoint) convention states that whenever something goes in one direction, it needs to be compensated by movement to another direction ("gap-fill melody"). 49 Arch-shaped melodic contour is common for children's songs, but it also presents the most common contour in songs around the world. ...
... 47 Неки аутори чак сматрају да су музички елементи у комуникацији између мајке и детета основа за музику коју човек, у каснијем добу, користи и ствара, односно да је комуникација између мајке и детета емоционални прототип из којег се касније развија музика. 48 Старо контрапунктско правило налаже да, након кретања у једном правцу, мелодија треба да настави с кретањем у другом правцу. 49 Мелодијска контура у облику лука уобичајена је за дечје песме, али представља и најчешћу контуру у песмама широм света. ...
A new interdisciplinary approach of teaching ABBA's songs in university solfeggio classes involves: graphical representation of melodic contours and harmonic progressions; embodied tension and relaxation caused by the (un)expected harmonic patterns/progressions, form and rhythm; aural and visual music analysis of ostinato and drone, as the elemental characteristics of popular music, and Dorian mode, PEN-tatonic and blue tones, as the main Orff-Schulwerk teaching strategies; emotions, experienced in relation to the gradual addition of voices and the chain of dominants; verbality, respecting the use of rhymes in verse translations, and the prosodic stress, musical meter and melodic contour alignment.
... Therefore, if this musical pitch specificity is the result of natural selection, it must have served some adaptive function. The adaptive functions of music proposed so far include sexual display Ravignani, 2018), strengthening social bonds (Dunbar, 2012;Harvey, 2017;Savage et al., 2021a;Storr, 1992) including mother-infant bonds (Dissanayake, 2001;, informing about group cohesion Mehr et al., 2021), and deterring predators . It is worth emphasizing that the adaptive functions indicated here are not mutually exclusive and could have contributed to a different degree in the selection of various elements of human musicality (Harrison & Seale, 2021;Savage et al., 2021b). ...
How did our distant ancestors defend themselves from lethal African predators after they moved from the trees to the ground and started sleeping in the open?
Strangely, this important question of human evolutionary history has been largely ignored by scholars. For Charles Darwin, humans did not need to defend themselves from predators, as they evolved via sexual selection in a predator-free environment; For Raymond Dart human ancestors were ruthless killers and cannibals, the apex predators of their entire environment, so the need for a defense from predators seemed irrelevant; Charles Brain proposed that, on the contrary, our ancestors were weak prey species, vulnerable to a large number of predators in Africa. Contemporary scholars mostly argue over two paradigms: (1) our ancestors were big game hunter-gatherers (partly modified Dart’s “Killer Ape” hypothesis), and (2) our ancestors were fearless aggressive scavengers (this idea was developed within the “new archaeology” paradigm of the 1980s, but the questions like how our ancestors managed to take kill away from powerful African predators and sleep on the ground at night, still remain open).
On June 23-26, 2023, an international muti-disciplinary conference “Defense Strategies in Early Human Evolution” took place at the Jim Corbett International Research Centre at the Grigol Robakidze University, Tbilisi, Georgia. The conference brought together behavioural ecologists, primatologists, biologists, cognitivists, philosophers, evolutionary musicologists, and conservationists, who were discussing various issues of this vast topic. The book that you hold in your hands is the result of this meeting.
... One of the most widely spread theories about the origin of music includes Dissanayake's theory about motherse. 29 The definition of motherese is that it is a simple form of language mothers often use when talking to their babies, repetitive in nature, with exaggerated intonation and rhythm. In Dissanayake's paper, antecedents of the temporal arts in early mother-infant interaction, she proposes a different approach to the usual in explaining the origin of music: instead of assuming that music, similarly to other social behaviors, evolved from a competition affecting reproductive success, she suggests that music originated from "perceptual, behavioral, cognitive, and emotional competencies and sensitivities that developed from primate precursors in survival enhancing affiliative interactions between mothers and infants under 6 months of age." ...
... Music allows parents to regulate the behavior (Trainor & Hannon, 2013) and arousal levels (Shenfield et al., 2003) of both their babies and themselves . This co-regulation and shared enjoyment experienced during musical activities contribute to the bonding between parents and infants (Dissanayake, 2000). ...
... Being social creatures, infants tend to share their stories of meaning with their parents as a means of engaging with them emotionally (Trevarthen & Malloch, 2017). Here, I used a communicative musicality framework in order to examine attempts to communicate and express oneself emotionally through musical interaction and vocalisation (Dissanayake, 2000;Trevarthen & Malloch, 2002;Trevarthen, 2012). ...
Drawing on communicative musicality theory and the notion that music as a cultural practice plays an important role in strengthening social and emotional bonds between parents and infants, this inquiry aimed to investigate the case of a Cypriot mother who employed musical activities in the everyday care of her baby. The mother participated in an online course, Music during pregnancy and infancy, over a period of four months. The course aimed to improve knowledge and teach a group of mothers the practical implications of using music and movement with infants.Thematic analysis of qualitative data revealed that, even though the participant did not possess a musical
background, she was able to employ a variety of musical activities with her infant that provided a powerful framework for coping with day to day routines, thereby improving the quality of motherhood for her. The participant stressed that music had become an essential parenting tool for her and her husband which accompanied everyday routines and bonded family members together. Further, she reported that she experienced a state of well-being which enhanced her confidence in her ability to cope with motherhood. The findings support previous research on the significance of musical interactions between mothers and infants.
Because of the benefits gained, music educators should consider undertaking further studies to investigate the benefits of extending participation in such courses to more new mothers.
... (MEN, 2016) Du côté de la psychologie de l'enfant (Stern, 1985(Stern, /1989Trevarthen, 2010 ;Trevarthen et Gratier, 2005), les chercheurs nous apprennent que tous les jeux de voix et de gestes caractéristiques de la comptine, initiés avec la complicité d'un parent affectueux, constituent le support d'un apprentissage subtil et très précoce de compétences multiples, tout autant psychoaffectives que cognitives. Stern (2010) et Dissanayake (2000 voient même dans cette orchestration enjouée du geste et de la voix « le fondement de tous les arts humains et des expériences qu'ils offrent » (cité par Gratier, 2007, p. 90). ...
En France, les comptines à l’école maternelle sont présentées dans les programmes nationaux comme un point d’appui fort à l’apprentissage du langage ; cette orientation est par ailleurs largement attestée par la recherche (Bolduc et Lefevre, 2012). Nous abordons dans cet article la comptine parlée dans ses dimensions corporelles et musicales, en interrogeant le rôle du geste dans la fluidité de son apprentissage en termes de mémorisation, de motivation à la dire, d’engagement des élèves et de l’enseignant lors de son interprétation. À la lumière du concept de musicalité communicative développé par Trevarthen (2010), nous observons une séquence d’enseignement/apprentissage de comptines en moyenne et grande section de maternelle. L’analyse nous permet de faire émerger des éléments caractéristiques de la proto-narration nous mettant en prise directe avec le rôle organisateur du geste – non pas le geste paraphrasant le sens ou les mots de la comptine – mais le geste qui, par son organisation rythmique, structure et donne sa direction à la temporalité de la narration. Elle nous permet ensuite d’appuyer l’idée selon laquelle, dans la manifestation rythmique du temps, le geste associé à la voix se charge d’intentions et d’émotions dont l’expressivité participe de la transmission du message. Des différents exemples choisis, il ressort que le geste corporel ou vocal n’est pas le fidèle accompagnateur du sens, mais qu’il produit le sens par une cohérence interne de ses enchaînements, cohérence d’un autre ordre que celle du texte et dont la plasticité est source de plaisir. L’article cherche à faire émerger cette cohérence, intuitivement pressentie par le professeur d’école observé lorsqu’il a conceptualisé sa pratique. Cette approche de la comptine vise à faire émerger de cette petite forme hybride sa dimension de forme temporelle abstraite, nourrie d’unités sonores dont la composante est gestuelle.
... Regarding the evolutionary origins of music, scholars today have virtually reached consensus that the evolutionary function of music Frontiers in Psychology 05 frontiersin.org (much like language) must be connected to the establishing of social connections among group members (Butcher, 1919;Blacking, 1973;Aiello and Dunbar, 1993;Dunbar, 1996Dunbar, , 2010Bannan, 1999Bannan, , 2012Brown, 2000Brown, , 2003Dissanayake, 2000;Benzon, 2001;Hagen and Bryant, 2003;Hauser and McDermott, 2003;McDermott and Hauser, 2005;Bispham, 2006;Cross, 2006;Fitch, 2006;Hagen and Hammerstein, 2009;Grauer, 2011;Hoeschele et al., 2015;Honing et al., 2015;Harvey, 2017;Savage, 2019;Mehr et al., 2021;Savage et al., 2021;Jan, 2022;Leongómez et al., 2022). Since the common human-ape ancestor was probably not only a capable individual singer but also sang in choruses, it is logical to suggest that the human tradition of choral singing started while they were still in an arboreal ecosystem. ...
The article draws attention to a neglected key element of human evolutionary history—the defense strategies of hominins and early humans against predators. Possible reasons for this neglect are discussed, and the historical development of this field is outlined. Many human morphological and behavioral characteristics–musicality, sense of rhythm, use of dissonances, entrainment, bipedalism, long head hair, long legs, strong body odor, armpit hair, traditions of body painting and cannibalism–are explained as predator avoidance tactics of an aposematic (warning display) defense strategy. The article argues that the origins of human musical faculties should be studied in the wider context of an early, multimodal human defense strategy from predators.
... Frontiers in Psychology 07 frontiersin.org mothers, in particular, and very young infants and in nursery rhymes in all cultures: Dissanayake, 2001;Falk, 2004;Malloch and Trevarthen, 2018) or in primate contact calls (Mehr et al., 2021). Though New World callitrichids are a melodic exception, most primate contact calls are quiet grunts [and not loud barks or "lost" calls, contra Mehr et al., 2021] exchanged between grooming partners so as to allow allies to maintain close spatial coordination when foraging through dense vegetation. ...
Music is widely recognised as a human universal, yet there is no agreed explanation for its function, or why and when it evolved. I summarise experimental evidence that the primary function of musicking lies in social bonding, both at the dyadic and community levels, via the effect that performing any form of music has on the brain’s endorphin system (the principal neurohormonal basis for social bonding in primates). The many other functions associated with music-making (mate choice, pleasure, coalition signalling, etc) are all better understood as derivative of this, either as secondary selection pressures or as windows of evolutionary opportunity (exaptations). If music’s function is primarily as an adjunct of the social bonding mechanism (a feature it shares with laughter, feasting, storytelling and the rituals of religion), then reverse engineering the problem suggests that the capacity for music-making most likely evolved with the appearance of archaic humans. This agrees well with anatomical evidence for the capacity to sing.
... With the long period of infant helplessness and care, the mother-child interaction, communication, and bonding, which are important for the child's cognitive and emotional development, were enhanced (Mithen, 2007). He points to the work of Dissanayake (2000) of infant directed speech known as 'motherese' or baby talk. The rhythmic and musical nature of the baby talk provided enhanced communication, positive emotional benefits and bonding for both the mother and infant: 'by coevolution in the infants and mother of rhythmic, temporally patterned, jointly maintained communicative interactions that produced and sustained positive affect-psychological brains states of interest and joy-by displaying and imitating emotion of affiliation, and thereby sharing, communicating, and reinforcing them' (Dissanayke, 2000, p. 390). ...
The understanding of the nature and the software of the mind has generated immense debate in religion, philosophy, sciences and psychology. Drucker notes that the basic assumption about the reality is the foundation for science, axiom and algorithm adopted for the theory, concept and method. The assumption differentiates what is important from what is noise. In the medieval Europe, the Catholic Church provided a unified theory of the world as a reflection of God's grand design and purpose. They held the power to define and thus had the power to control people's lives. Their power was challenged during the Renaissance with the emergence of humanism. The Cartesian duality of separating the mind from body allowed the separation of church and state and science to flourish. In East Asia, Confucius articulated a different set of assumptions. Humans are defined as ingan 人間 ('human between') and assume relationship and compassion as the basic foundation. This is the basis of the cultural difference and theory of the mind. The Darwinian Evolutionary Theory replaced the 348 Psychology and Developing Societies 35(2) religious definition, Cartesian duality, and empathy with the biological traits, instincts and natural selection. Psychology adopted the biological model to explain human behaviour. Research in paleoanthropology, genetics, and neurobiology outline the limitations of the biological model in explaining the human mind and behaviour. Bandura has documented the importance of human agency, consciousness, and self-efficacy in explaining human behaviour and provided empirical results with greater predictive and explanatory power than the traditional psychological theories. Indigenous and cultural psychology represents the continuation of the assumptions, theory and concepts outlined by Wilhelm Wundt and Albert Bandura. Kim outlines the transactional model of science, where human agency (measured by self-efficacy) can explain a person's performance and outcome. Empirically, the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the 85-year longitudinal study, found the unexpected results that challenge the previous held assumptions. Waldinger and Schulz have found that maintaining good relationship is the most important predictor of happiness, health and longevity and not high income, success, IQ and personality. Kim and Kim found that for Millennials and Gen Z, happiness is predicted by relational and social efficacy, positive outlook, and receiving social support from family, friends and online communities, replicating previous results found across three generations and for the past 25 years in Korea. These results point to the importance of examining the basic assumptions of the theories in psychology and the scientific foundation of indigenous and cultural psychology.
... Human infants interact with their caregivers producing and responding to patterns of sound and action. These temporally-controlled interactions involve synchrony and turntaking, and are employed in the modulation and regulation of affective state (Dissanayake, 2000) and in the achievement and control of joint attention also referred as to 'primary intersubjectivity' (Trevarthen, 1999). This rhythmicity is also a manifestation of a fundamental musical competence, and "…musicality is part of a natural drive in human sociocultural learning which begins in infancy" (Trevarthen, 1999, p. 194) and also allows infants to follow and respond in kind to temporal regularities in vocalization, movement, and time, to initiate temporally regular sets of vocalisations and movements (Trevarthen, 1999). ...
Here we review the most important psychological aspects of music, its neural substrates, its universality and likely biological origins and, finally, how the study of neurocognition and emotions of music can provide one of the most important windows to the comprehension of the higher brain functioning and human mind. We begin with the main aspects of the theory of modularity, its behavioral and neuropsychological evidences. Then, we discuss basic psychology and neuropsychology of music and show how music and language are cognitively and neurofunctionally related. Subsequently we briefly present the evidences against the view of a high degree of specification and encapsulation of the putative language module, and how the ethnomusicological, pscychological and neurocognitive studies on music help to shed light on the issues of modularity and evolution, and appear to give further support for a cross-modal, interactive view of neurocognitive processes. Finally, we will argue that the notion of large modules do not adequately describe the organization of complex brain functions such as language, math or music, and propose a less radical view of modularity, in which the modular systems are specified not at the level of culturally determined cognitive domains but more at the level of perceptual and sensorimotor representations. © Cien. Resumo Aqui revisamos os aspectos psicológicos mais importantes da música, seus substratos neurais, sua universalidade e prováveis origens biológicas e, finalmente, como o estudo da neurocognição e das emoções associadas à música pode fornecer uma das mais importantes janelas para a compreensão das funções cerebrais superiores e da mente humana. Iniciamos com os principais aspectos da teoria da modularidade, suas evidências comportamentais e neuropsicológicas. Então discutimos a psicologia e a neuropsicologia básicas da música e mostramos como a música e a linguagem estão cognitiva e neurofuncionalmente
... Os precursores desenvolvimentais da música, desde o início da primeira infância, na fase pré-verbal e ao longo de toda ela, ocorrem sob a forma de comportamentos proto-musicais, os quais são exploratórios e cinesteticamente encarnados, intimamente ligados a interações controladas no tempo, como brincadeiras de vocalização e a movimentos corporais e envolvidos na modulação e regulação de estados afetivos [43]. Um dos aspectos mais fascinantes da música é o fenômeno interacionista universal do "maternalês", a fala dirigia aos bebês, na qual adultos de todas as culturas usam uma fala bem mais aguda (1 ou 2 oitavas acima), com entonações exageradas e de forma muito mais lenta, semelhantes às encontradas nas cantigas de bebês (acalanto, ninar, etc.), também universais. ...
Resumo Este artigo apresenta evidências dos fundamentos neurobiológicos e evolucionários da música e suas implicações terapêuticas. Primeiro, a música é um comportamento universal, presente em toda cultura. Segundo, apesar de evidências de alguns mecanismos músico-específicos, estudos de lesão e de neu-roimagem revelam que a música é também altamente supramodal e interage com múltiplos domínios cerebrais, recrutando ativação bilateral em regiões envolvidas com o processamento linguístico, motor e espacial. Terceiro, os padrões básicos de organização melódica e temporal da música são compartilhados entre as culturas, uma propriedade análoga às regras universais da sintaxe compartilhadas por diferentes línguas. Quarto, as respostas dos ouvintes à música também são universais através das culturas. Quinto, estudos de neurodesenvolvimento mostram que bebês processam padrões musicais semelhantemente aos adultos, fornecendo evidências de mecanismos transcendentes à cultura. Sexto, a música evoca emoções genuínas e fortes, ativando estruturas cerebrais filogeneticamente antigas do sistema límbico. Finalmente, consideramos uma redefinição da música como uma forma de comunicação baseada no som, corporificada, não-referencial e polissêmica, cujo conteúdo é essencialmente emocional. Como a música ativa áreas cerebrais envolvidas no processamento linguístico, espacial, motor e emocional básico, in-duzindo neuroplasticidade, ela representa uma possibilidade terapêutica de baixo risco e de baixo custo. Palavras-chave: música, cognição, neurodesenvolvimento, emoção.
... (Dissanayake, 2008, p. 172; emphases in the original; see also Dissanayake, 2012) Thus, for Dissanayake, rhythmically structured vocalisations initially appeared as an exclusively mother-infant form of communication and then spread more widely within hominin cultures to create the basis of musicality and, some would argue, of linguistic competence (the relationship between IDS and the (co)evolution of music and language is discussed further in §2.7.4). She therefore stresses the fundamental importance of IDS in our species' survival, and sees it as an antecedent of the "temporal arts", of which music is arguably primary (Dissanayake, 2000). As with other music-evolutionary sequences, it is difficult to see how this hypothesised dyadic-then-communal ordering might be verified; and it is possible that the two forms of "proto-music" -mother-infant and communal -might have originated very closely in time. ...
Music in Evolution and Evolution in Music by Steven Jan is a comprehensive account of the relationships between evolutionary theory and music. Examining the ‘evolutionary algorithm’ that drives biological and musical-cultural evolution, the book provides a distinctive commentary on how musicality and music can shed light on our understanding of Darwin’s famous theory, and vice-versa.
Comprised of seven chapters, with several musical examples, figures and definitions of terms, this original and accessible book is a valuable resource for anyone interested in the relationships between music and evolutionary thought. Jan guides the reader through key evolutionary ideas and the development of human musicality, before exploring cultural evolution, evolutionary ideas in musical scholarship, animal vocalisations, music generated through technology, and the nature of consciousness as an evolutionary phenomenon.
A unique examination of how evolutionary thought intersects with music, Music in Evolution and Evolution in Music is essential to our understanding of how and why music arose in our species and why it is such a significant presence in our lives.
... Many have argued that synchronized movement facilitates human social interaction, aligning emotional and mental states and promoting social cohesion (Dissanayake, 2000;Durkheim, 1912;McNeill, 1995;Tarr et al., 2016;Turner, 1995). More recently, studies have found empirical evidence of synchrony's positive effects on prosociality: synchrony is reported to promote cooperation (Reddish et al., 2013;Valdesolo et al., 2010;Wiltermuth & Heath, 2009); affiliative behaviors (Macrae et al., 2008;Paladino et al., 2010); and positive emotions (Hove & Risen, 2009;Launay et al., 2014), connection (Hove, 2008;Lakens, 2010;Wiltermuth & Heath, 2009), trust (Launay et al., 2013), or compassion for others ( Valdesolo & DeSteno, 2011). ...
Many studies argue that synchronized movement increases prosocial attitudes and behavior. We reviewed meta-analytic evidence that reported effects of synchrony may be driven by experimenter expectancy, leading to experimenter bias; and participant expectancy, otherwise known as placebo effects. We found that a majority of published studies do not adequately control for experimenter bias and that multiple independent replication attempts with added controls have failed to find the original effects. In a preregistered experiment, we measured participant expectancy directly, asking whether participants have a priori expectations about synchrony and prosociality that match the findings in published literature. Expectations about the effects of synchrony on prosocial attitudes directly mirrored previous experimental findings (including both positive and null effects)—despite the participants not actually engaging in synchrony. On the basis of this evidence, we propose an alternative account of the reported bottom-up effects of synchrony on prosociality: the effects of synchrony on prosociality may be explicable as the result of top-down expectations invoked by placebo and experimenter effects.
... There is evidence that the beginnings of music stretch back into the Upper Paleolithic (Kunej and Turk 2000) as shown by, among other artifacts, the discovered prehistoric variants of bone flutes found in the caves of Geissenklösterle in Germany, Isturitz in France, and other locations (Hahn and Münzel 1995;Kunej and Turk 2000;Buisson 1990). The ubiquity of "early" music is evidenced by its use among "stakeholders" as diverse as Plato's Academy (Freeman 2000), the Catholic Church, Australian Aborigines, and Kalahari Bushmen (Dissanayake 2000). ...
According to decades of research in educational psychology, learning is a social process that is enhanced when it happens in contexts that are familiar and relevant. But because of the skyrocketing popularity of data science, today we often work with students coming from an abundance of academic concentrations, professional, and personal backgrounds. How can our teaching account for the existing multiplicity of interests and be inclusive of diverse cultural, socioeconomic, and professional backgrounds? Music is a convenient medium that can engage and include. Enter Playmeans, a novel web application (“app”) that enables students to perform unsupervised learning while exploring music. The flexible user interface lets a student select their favorite artist and acquire, in real time, the corresponding discography in a matter of seconds. The student then interacts with the acquired data by means of visualizing, clustering, and, most importantly, listening to music—all of which are happening within the novel Playmeans app.
... This stream of thought opened the doors to an aesthetic view of development that paid attention to a temporal interaction dimension whose flow and meaning are similar to the musical phenomenon. Subsequently, Dissanayake (2000Dissanayake ( , 2008Dissanayake ( , 2017, emphasizing a multimodal perspective of adult-infant interaction, stressed that antecedents of temporal arts, not only music but also dance, can be found in them. As Sheets-Johnstone (2011, 2015) indicated from a philosophical approach, the mind/body dichotomy could only be overcome by granting primacy to movement because thinking and moving are not separate events but aspects of a kinetic bodily logos attuned to an evolving dynamic situation. ...
This introductory chapter begins by explaining the origin of this book: a cooperative and interdisciplinary path walked by its authors that led to a conception of developmental psychology in permanent dialogue with the psychology of music, the philosophy of mind, and human movement studies. The overall framework of each chapter is then presented, arising from the confluence of three contemporary points of view: embodied cognition, the multimodal approach to child development, and the second-person perspective in social cognition. Such a framework allowed us to revisit some relevant topics in current developmental psychology in a new light, including adult–infant interactions, intersubjective experiences, the development of perceptual skills that allow infants to participate in the interpersonal world, verbal and gestural communication skills, and the complexity of play in infancy and early childhood. The chapter also provides an overview of each chapter in the book, outlining briefly their thematic connections.KeywordsEmbodimentExperienceIntersubjectivitySecond-personMovementMultimodal
... The link between early reciprocity experiences and the arts became increasingly relevant in developmental studies. Dissanayake (2000Dissanayake ( , 2001Dissanayake ( , 2017 suggested the existence of temporal arts antecedents in early interactions. To attract attention, the caregiver elaborates multimodal performances, making special ordinary sounds and movements by repeating phrases, sounds, movements, and facial expressions and by exaggerating the melodic contours, amplitude, duration, and pauses in them. ...
When adults interact with babies, they do special things. In this chapter, through a microanalysis of interaction scenes between an adult and a 7-month-old baby, we describe the infant-directed improvised performance. The aesthetic perspective assumed led us to continue the path initiated by others, evidencing remarkable structural and functional affinities between these kinds of encounters between adults and infants and the temporal arts. The infant-directed improvised performances are sound-kinetic phrases improvised by the adult through resources also used in temporal art performances, like the repetition-variation form. Adults create brief motifs collected from the baby’s behavior or contingencies in the surroundings and repeat them in varied forms. In this chapter, we specify the temporal, energetic, and spatial dimensions of these variations through the use of analytical tools developed for the exegesis of artistic expression. Interesting events occur in infant-directed improvised performance: adults summon infants to social life, offer them well-formed behavioral units favoring their recognition, and interpret the world for infants, regulating their moods. They also illuminate cognitive structures such as image schemas and invite infants to experience primary metaphors. By virtue of performances, babies are also initiated into corporeal and aesthetic enculturation.KeywordsInfant-directed improvised performancePrimary metaphorsImage schemasTemporal artsExpressive resourcesImprovisation
... The current debate about the origins of music involves a wide range of theories, which can be broadly categorized into adaptationist (Huron, 2001;Honing and Ploeger, 2012) and non-adaptationist (James, 1890;Sperber, 1996;Pinker, 1997). Darwin's sexual selection hypothesis of the evolution of musicality (Darwin, 1871) is one of the three frequently discussed (e.g., Zahavi and Zahavi, 1999;Miller, 2000;Varella et al., 2017;Verpooten, 2021) -and not mutually exclusive -adaptationist theories of the origins of musicality, alongside proposals for a prominent role of music in social cohesion (e.g., Roederer, 1984;Dunbar, 2004;Brown, 2007;Savage et al., 2020), parental care and infant communication (e.g., Dissanayake, 2000Dissanayake, , 2008Falk, 2004;Mehr et al., 2020;Leongómez et al., 2021) and territorial antipredatory and territorial defense (e.g., Hagen and Hammerstein, 2009) through natural selection. The present study aims to further elucidate the role of sexual selection in the evolution of musicality from a psychological perspective. ...
A number of theories about the origins of musicality have incorporated biological and social perspectives. Darwin argued that musicality evolved by sexual selection, functioning as a courtship display in reproductive partner choice. Darwin did not regard musicality as a sexually dimorphic trait, paralleling evidence that both sexes produce and enjoy music. A novel research strand examines the effect of musicality on sexual attraction by acknowledging the importance of facial attractiveness. We previously demonstrated that music varying in emotional content increases the perceived attractiveness and dating desirability of opposite-sex faces only in females, compared to a silent control condition. Here, we built upon this approach by presenting the person depicted (target) as the performer of the music (prime), thus establishing a direct link. We hypothesized that musical priming would increase sexual attraction, with high-arousing music inducing the largest effect. Musical primes (25 s, piano solo music) varied in arousal and pleasantness, and targets were photos of other-sex faces of average attractiveness and with neutral expressions (2 s). Participants were 35 females and 23 males (heterosexual psychology students, single, and no hormonal contraception use) matched for musical background, mood, and liking for the music used in the experiment. After musical priming, females’ ratings of attractiveness and dating desirability increased significantly. In males, only dating desirability was significantly increased by musical priming. No specific effects of music-induced pleasantness and arousal were observed. Our results, together with other recent empirical evidence, corroborate the sexual selection hypothesis for the evolution of human musicality.
... Having been confined to the status of a mere aesthetic object, music was suggested to be a "byproduct," and the ability to perceive, produce and enjoy it the result of auditory sensitivities that evolved for other purposes such as auditory scene analysis and language (Pinker, 1997). 1 This argument, and the neo-Darwinian logic in which it was couched, dominated the field for the last two decades. Research consequently focused on the various ancestral contexts in which music might be functional: male or male-coalition displays (e.g., Merker, 1999;Miller, 2000), coalition displays more generally (e.g., Hagen and Bryant, 2003), infant care (e.g., Dissanayake, 1999) and social bonding (e.g., Dunbar, 2012). More recently, two contrasting articles both rejected the byproduct hypothesis, but still dealt primarily with the question of function: Mehr et al. (2021) argued that music served as a credible signal in the context of both coalition displays and infant care, while Savage et al. (2021) argued for social bonding as an overarching function, operating in the context of infant care, mating and group cohesion. ...
Theories of music evolution rely on our understanding of what music is. Here, I argue that music is best conceptualized as an interactive technology, and propose a coevolutionary framework for its emergence. I present two basic models of attachment formation through behavioral alignment applicable to all forms of affiliative interaction and argue that the most critical distinguishing feature of music is entrained temporal coordination. Music's unique interactive strategy invites active participation and allows interactions to last longer, include more participants, and unify emotional states more effectively. Regarding its evolution, I propose that music, like language, evolved in a process of collective invention followed by genetic accommodation. I provide an outline of the initial evolutionary process which led to the emergence of music, centered on four key features: technology, shared intentionality, extended kinship, and multilevel society. Implications of this framework on music evolution, psychology, cross-species and cross-cultural research are discussed.
... Det är alltså en estetisk kunskap som barnet använder sig av för att styra föräldern mot vissa uttryck genom att uppmuntra viss dynamik, överdrifter, mimik, röstlägen och repetitioner. Hon kallar denna kunskap för "protoestetisk" (Dissanayake, 2000(Dissanayake, , 2007. Människans fundamentala estetiska behov och kompetenser tar enligt Dissanayake form i rytm och ritualer för att skapa samhörighet och meningsfullhet mellan människor. ...
Force, form, transformations. Kinesthetic musicality and body-worlding in boy ́s war play
War play has generally been studied with violence as a central perspective, investigating its impact on children’s aggression, both in a positive and negative sense. Some research results have claimed that war play can contribute to normalising or even encouraging violent behavior amongst children, while other results have claimed that children can develop important physical, cognitive or social skills through war play. However, this study examines the aesthetic dimensions that children create and explore in war play in their early childhood, above all by placing their movement at the foreground. The phenomenon of war play is here reframed and analysed, mainly through a dance theoretical framework. This framework embraces phenomenology with a focus on the body-subject ́s movement in the world–a focus which is further displaced towards movement in the world with the help of process philosophy.The research data is mainly based on ethnographic field studies and art film, but also of interviews with the participants who are boys aged three to nine years old. The structure and organisation of the analysis is inspired by the principles of Grounded Theory. Six main categories emerged as the result of the study: rhythm, orchestrating space, fictional characters as spaces for exploring movement-quality, the movement canon of war play, phrases and aesthetic attention. Concluding, the results of the thesis are discussed with a focus on the core category, kinesthetic musicality, that connects all the categories found in the research data. Kinesthetic musicality also constitutes the core of an emerging theory that can be further tested and developed in future research. This emerging theory can be described as capturing a dimension of how children in their early childhood understand, explore and create the world.
Keywords: War play, improvisation, proprioception, perception, aesthetics, kinestesia, space, body-subject, transduction, didactic musicality, transformation, force, form, time, becoming, attention, sensation, the thinking body and body-worlding.
... Parents and caregivers all over the world make use of language play in the form of songs, nursery rhymes, bouncing games and finger plays (Ilari, 2005;Ilari, Moura, & Bourscheidt, 2011;Stern, 1974). These intuitive and ritualized types of poetic verbal behaviour contribute to social cohesion and attachment (Dissanayake, 2000;Markova, 2018), as well as emotion regulation (Cirelli, Trehub, & Trainor, 2018;Corbeil, Trehub, & Peretz, 2016;Mehr, Song, & Spelke, 2016;Trehub, Ghazban, & Corbeil, 2015). With regards to infant-caregiver interaction, poetic language play is ever-present as well (Markova, 2018;Stern, 1974;Trehub, 2019): infants are exposed to singing and spoken nursery rhymes from their caregivers, e.g., during diaper change or bath time, prior to meals or before being put to bed (Ilari, 2005;Mehr, 2014;Trehub et al., 1997). ...
... Det är alltså en estetisk kunskap som barnet använder sig av för att styra föräldern mot vissa uttryck genom att uppmuntra viss dynamik, överdrifter, mimik, röstlägen och repetitioner. Hon kallar denna kunskap för "protoestetisk" (Dissanayake, 2000(Dissanayake, , 2007. Människans fundamentala estetiska behov och kompetenser tar enligt Dissanayake form i rytm och ritualer för att skapa samhörighet och meningsfullhet mellan människor. ...
... When I hear certain sounds or melodies (e.g., lullabies), I feel these soothing experiences (e.g., mother's touch and a flood of oxytocin), and an adaptive association is forged that can be drawn upon for emotional regulation ever after. Mother-infant interaction, with its strong physiological, emotional, and even sonic synchronizing, may help shape the earliest cultural templates like music and story, and this may have started with H. heidelbergensis (Dissanayake 2000a). My action-states (e.g., squeezing hand, grooming motions, tool use sequences, even sexual technique) and my feeling states (emotions) are heavily correlated with the action states and feeling states of my social group. ...
A mythopoetic paradigm or perspective sees the world primarily as a dramatic story of competing personal intentions, rather than a system of objective impersonal laws. Asma (2017) argued that our contemporary imaginative cognition is evolutionarily conserved-it has structural and functional similarities to premodern Homo sapiens’s cognition. This article will (i) outline the essential features of mythopoetic cognition or adaptive imagination, (ii) delineate the adaptive sociocultural advantages of mythopoetic cognition, (iii) explain the phylogenetic and ontogenetic mechanisms that give rise to human mythopoetic mind (i.e., genetically endowed simulation and associational systems that underwrite diverse symbolic systems), (iv) show how mythopoetic cognition challenges contemporary trends in cognitive science and philosophy, and (v) recognize and outline empirical approaches for a new cognitive science of the imagination.
... Motherese shares many patterns of encoding with animal communication [517]. Auditory, visual, and locomotive cues in parent-child interaction are coordinated based on instinctive impulses rather than learned conventions [518]. Such rituals prove to be much more resilient to change than many forms of pitch-based music. ...
Together with language, music is perhaps our most distinctive behavioral trait. Following the lead of paleolinguistic research, different hypotheses have been proposed to explain why only humans perform music and how this ability might have evolved in the species. In this paper, we advance a new model of music evolution that builds on the theory of self-domestication, according to which the human phenotype is, at least in part, the outcome of a process similar to mammal domestication, triggered by a progressive reduction in reactive aggression levels in response to environmental changes. In the paper, we specifically argue that changes in aggression management through the course of human cultural evolution can account for the behaviors conducive to the emergence and evolution of music. We hypothesize 4 stages in the evolutionary development of music under the influence of environmental changes and evolution of social organization: starting from musilanguage, proto-music gave rise to personal and private forms of timbre-oriented music, then to small-group ensembles of pitch-oriented music, at first of indefinite and then definite pitch, and finally to collective (tonal) music. These stages parallel what has been hypothesized for languages and encompass the diversity of music types and genres described worldwide. Overall, music complexity emerges in a gradual fashion under the effects of enhanced abilities for cultural niche construction, resulting from the stable trend of reduction in reactive aggression towards the end of the Pleistocene, leading to the rise of hospitality codes, and succeeded by increase in proactive aggression from the beginning of the Holocene onward. This paper addresses numerous controversies in the literature on the evolution of music by providing a clear structural definition of music, identifying its structural features that distinguish it from oral language, and summarizing the typology of operational functions of music and formats of its transmission. The proposed framework of structural approach to music arms a researcher with means to identify and comparatively analyze different schemes of tonal organization of music, placing them in the context of human social and cultural evolution. Especially valuable contribution to the understanding of transition from animal communication to human music and language is the theory of so-called “personal song”, described and analyzed here from ethological, social, cultural, cognitive, and musicological perspectives. The emergence of personal song and its development into a social institution are interlinked with the evolution of kinship and placed into the timeline of cultural evolution, based on totality of ethnographic, archaeological, anthropological, genetic, and paleoclimatic data.
From Arctic Inuit and Kalahari San to the Aborigines and Māori of Australasia--pronounced differences in environments have spawned highly different indigenous musical systems over the ages. This modern manifestation of such a broad diversification of the musics of societies dispersed across the globe may have humbler beginnings that stretch back to the origins of our genus--where melodic voices were first married to rhythmic [bodily] drumming. Musical features also appear in the calls of animals, including primates, where [deimatic] threats are vocalized in the most basic form of rhythmic patterning (e.g. barking). I investigated leads, from previous explorations on both humans and primates, suggesting that deficient ecological conditions (e.g. sparse vegetation) and economical disequilibrium between the sexes (e.g. polygyny and dimorphism) may have driven more rhythmic musicality. I re-compared variables from both the Binford Hunter-Gatherer dataset and the Standard Cross Cultural Survey with the Natural History of Song database. Ordinary least-square regression analysis revealed a handful of further corroborating associations even after considerations of multiple testing. Numerous aspects of social and environmental influences (e.g. animal husbandry, colonial displacement, long dry seasonality, as well as recent famines and migrations) correlate with such aspects of musical behavior with compelling consistency. But the constellation of associations of violent, male, group aggressions with rhythmic musicality--especially in non-egalitarian societies--stand out most strikingly. Such a combination could have resulted from a co-evolution in dryer conditions where more egalitarian foraging was usurped by masculine-skewed hunts for highly dispersed yet more dangerous game. Such handling of larger animals tends to be performed by all-male groups--resulting in great feasts, larger hides, bigger drums, and hence the potential for a more pronounced rhythmic musicality. Humans likely experienced periods of ecological flux throughout the Pleistocene--leading to seasonally varied music--perhaps as part of diasporic herd-following migration patterns and cycles. It also implies that highly rhythmic music, even in modern societies, could also serve as an indicator of on-going distress and disparities in both resource access and subsistence equality. Thus, in addition to fission and fusion of heterogeneous groups and their diverse tool industries, temporal (especially seasonal) flux of ecological and subsistence conditions could have also engendered a highly diverse assemblage of musical styles, modes, functions, and affects.
In Chap. 1 it was argued that the co-occurrence of autism and exceptional musicality cannot be legitimately explored in a framework that conceptualises music as a ‘rule based’ or ‘closed’ system of structured sounds, and musicality as a restricted set of perceptual, cognitive and memory skills. In this chapter, current thinking about music and musicality will be explored in the context of a biomusicology framework that conceptualises musicality as a species-typical trait of humans that may be studied using similar methods to those used to explore complex behaviours in other species.
This study investigates how a first-time Cypriot mother used music in caring for her infant during the COVID-19 pandemic. Limited research has been done about musical parenting during this time, highlighting the importance of this single case study. For 5 months, the mother-participant engaged in an online musical parenting program, which aimed to increase knowledge regarding the use of music and movement with infants and suggest ways for practical implications. Data included interviews, informal discussions, the participant’s digital journals and filmed videos, and researcher field notes taken during the teaching program. Thematic analysis revealed that even without prior formal or informal musical training, and in prolonged isolation with related stressors during the COVID-19 pandemic, the mother-participant engaged extensively in musical interaction with her infant. Musical activities provided a meaningful framework for the mother to cope with the daily demands of mothering and to manage the isolation due to COVID-19. Music engagement enhanced the bond between the mother and her infant, united family members, and promoted her perceived state of well-being. The findings support previous research on the significance of musical interaction between caregivers and infants, particularly during the COVID-19 outbreak.
The evolution of human musicality has often been linked to the evolution of the faculty of language since the development of musical and linguistic abilities seems to share a common phase in their ontogenesis. Apart from that, both singing and speaking are, on the one hand, universal forms of human vocal expression and, on the other hand, consist of culturally specific elements. Such a probable co-occurrence of the predisposition to speak and sing, with the cultural variability of both these forms of communication, has prompted researchers to indicate gene–culture co-evolution as the probable mechanism responsible for the emergence of human musicality and the faculty of language. However, in most evolutionary scenarios proposed so far, the evolutionary paths of music and language followed independently after divergence from a common precursor. This article, based on observations of contemporary interactions between language and music, presents a different view in which musical and language-like forms of proto-communication interacted leading to the repurposing of some of their neural mechanisms. In this process, the Baldwinian interplay between plasticity and canalization has been proposed as the most probable evolutionary mechanism that shaped our musicality. The premises that support the presence of cross-domain co-evolutionary interactions in the contemporary communicative niche of Homo sapiens are indicated.
Music is a deeply entrenched human phenomenon. In this article, I argue that its evolutionary origins are intrinsically intertwined with the incremental anatomical, cognitive, social, and technological evolution of the hominin lineage. I propose an account of the evolution of Plio-Pleistocene hominins, focusing on traits that would be later implicated in music making. Such traits can be conceived as comprising the musicality mosaic or the multifaceted foundations of musicality. I then articulate and defend an account of protomusical behaviour, drawing theoretical licence from the social brain framework of Robin Dunbar and colleagues, as well as the evolutionary framework for human culture and cooperation developed by Kim Sterelny. The role of gene-culture co-evolution and niche construction is brought to the fore in articulating the evolutionary account. Finally, I defend the view that music subsequently developed via processes of social learning and cumulative culture.
"Αντλώντας από τη θεωρία της επικοινωνιακής μουσικότητα (communicative musicality) και τη θέση ότι η μουσική ως κοινωνική-πολιτισμική πρακτική ενισχύει τη σύνδεση μεταξύ βρεφών και γονέων/φροντιστών, προάγοντας τις κοινωνικές και συναισθηματικές δεξιότητες του βρέφους, η παρούσα έρευνα στόχευε στη διερεύνηση των εμπειριών μίας περίπτωσης μητέρας από την Κύπρο που χρησιμοποίησε μουσικές δραστηριότητες κατά την καθημερινή φροντίδας του βρέφους της. Η μητέρα, για διάστημα 5 μηνών, συμμετείχε στο διαδικτυακό πρόγραμμα «Music during pregnancy and infancy», που στόχευε να επιμορφώσει τις συμμετέχουσες μητέρες, για τη χρήση της μουσικής κατά την καθημερινή φροντίδα των παιδιών τους, και να τους παρουσιάσει πρακτικές εισηγήσεις. Η θεματική ανάλυση των ποιοτικών δεδομένων που συνελέγησαν κατέδειξε ότι, παρόλο που η μητέρα δεν είχε μουσικό υπόβαθρο, ενσωμάτωσε εκτενώς μια ποικιλία μουσικών δραστηριοτήτων με το βρέφος της, οι οποίες νοηματοδότησαν ξεχωριστά την καθημερινότητα εκείνης και του βρέφους της. Η μουσική συνόδευε την καθημερινή φροντίδα του βρέφους, λειτουργώντας ως απαραίτητο εργαλείο για την ανατροφή του, και υποστηρίζοντας ταυτόχρονα τη συναισθηματική σύνδεση των μελών της οικογένειας. Η μητέρα τόνισε ότι η μουσική είχε θετικό αντίκτυπο στην ευημερία της προσφέροντάς της συναισθηματική ασφάλεια και αυτοπεποίθηση στο δύσκολο της
ρόλο. Τα ευρήματα ενισχύουν προηγούμενες έρευνες σχετικά με τη σημασία της μουσικής αλληλεπίδρασης μεταξύ μητέρων και βρεφών."
This Handbook offers an overview of the thriving interdisciplinary field of Western music and philosophy. It seeks to represent this area in all its fullness, including a diverse array of perspectives from music studies (notably historical musicology, music theory, and ethnomusicology), philosophy (incorporating both analytic and continental approaches), and a range of cognate disciplines (such as critical theory and intellectual history). The Handbook includes, but does not confine itself to, consideration of key questions in aesthetics and the philosophy of music. Each essay provides an introduction to its topic, an assessment of past scholarship, and a research-driven argument for the future of the research area in question. Taken together, these essays provide a current snapshot of this field and outline an abundance of ways in which it might develop in the future.
Efforts to integrate music into healthcare systems and wellness practices are accelerating but the biological foundations supporting these initiatives remain underappreciated. As a result, music-based interventions are often sidelined in medicine. Here, I bring together advances in music research from neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry to bridge music’s specific foundations in human biology with its specific therapeutic applications. The framework I propose organizes the neurophysiological effects of music around four core elements of human musicality: tonality, rhythm, reward, and sociality. For each, I review key concepts, biological bases, and evidence of clinical benefits. Within this framework, I outline a strategy to increase music’s impact on health based on standardizing treatments and their alignment with individual differences in responsivity to these musical elements. I propose that an integrated biological understanding of human musicality—describing each element’s functional origins, development, phylogeny, and neural bases—is critical to advancing rational applications of music in mental health and wellness.
Starting from an overview of the most recent studies on musical creativity in childhood, this chapter introduces a constructivist perspective based on “reflexive” interaction and the concept of creativity in and through music as a need and a tool for children to express and shape their emotions, style, and identity. The reflexive interaction paradigm is related to the phenomena of repetition-variation, turn-taking, and co-regulation. It is grounded on neuroscience, flow theory, and embodied cognition, and there are empirical evidences that it can have significant effects on musical creative processes in children. The chapter provides an outline of the theoretical framework and presents examples of studies and activities with children between eight months and ten years of age in reflexive interactive environments. Implications for practices are suggested.
Investigation of the role of music in early life and learning has been somewhat fragmented, with studies being undertaken within a range of fields with little apparent conversation across disciplinary boundaries, and with an emphasis on preschoolers’ and school-aged children’s learning and engagement. The Oxford Handbook of Early Childhood Learning and Development in Music brings together leading researchers in infant and early childhood cognition, music education, music therapy, neuroscience, cultural and developmental psychology, and music sociology to interrogate questions of how our capacity for music develops from birth, and its contributions to learning and development. Researchers in cultural psychology and sociology of musical childhoods investigate those factors that shape children’s musical learning and development and the places and spaces in which children encounter and engage with music. These issues are complemented with consideration of the policy environment at local, national, and global levels in relation to music early learning and development and the ways these shape young children’s music experiences and opportunities. The handbook also explores issues of music provision and developmental contributions for children with special education needs, children living in medical settings and participating in music therapy, and those living in sites of trauma and conflict. Consideration of these environments provides a context to examine music learning and development in family, community, and school settings including general and specialized school environments. Authors trace the trajectories of development within and across cultures and settings and identify those factors that facilitate or constrain children’s early music learning and development.
Music is a cultural activity universally present in all human societies. Several hypotheses have been formulated to understand the possible origins of music and the reasons for its emergence. Here, we test two hypotheses: (1) the coalition signaling hypothesis which posits that music could have emerged as a tool to signal cooperative intent and signal strength of alliances and (2) music as a strategy to deter potential predators. In addition, we further explore the link between tactile cues and the propensity of mothers to sing toward infants. For this, we investigated the singing behaviors of hunter-gatherer mothers during daily foraging trips among the Mbendjele BaYaka in the Republic of the Congo. Although singing is a significant component of their daily activities, such as when walking in the forest or collecting food sources, studies on human music production in hunter-gatherer societies are mostly conducted during their ritual ceremonies. In this study, we collected foraging and singing behavioral data of mothers by using focal follows of five BaYaka women during their foraging trips in the forest. In accordance with our predictions for the coalition signaling hypothesis, women were more likely to sing when present in large groups, especially when group members were less familiar. However, predictions of the predation deterrence hypothesis were not supported as the interaction between group size and distance from the village did not have a significant effect on the likelihood of singing. The latter may be due to limited variation in predation risk in the foraging areas, because of the intense bush meat trade, and hence, future studies should include foraging areas with higher densities of wild animals. Lastly, we found that mothers were more likely to sing when they were carrying infants compared to when infants were close, but carried by others, supporting the prediction that touch plays an important prerequisite role in musical interaction between the mother and child. Our study provides important insight into the role of music as a tool in displaying the intent between or within groups to strengthen potentially conflict-free alliances during joint foraging activities.
Investigation of the role of music in early life and learning has been somewhat fragmented, with studies being undertaken within a range of fields with little apparent conversation across disciplinary boundaries, and with an emphasis on preschoolers’ and school-aged children’s learning and engagement. The Oxford Handbook of Early Childhood Learning and Development in Music brings together leading researchers in infant and early childhood cognition, music education, music therapy, neuroscience, cultural and developmental psychology, and music sociology to interrogate questions of how our capacity for music develops from birth, and its contributions to learning and development. Researchers in cultural psychology and sociology of musical childhoods investigate those factors that shape children’s musical learning and development and the places and spaces in which children encounter and engage with music. These issues are complemented with consideration of the policy environment at local, national, and global levels in relation to music early learning and development and the ways these shape young children’s music experiences and opportunities. The handbook also explores issues of music provision and developmental contributions for children with special education needs, children living in medical settings and participating in music therapy, and those living in sites of trauma and conflict. Consideration of these environments provides a context to examine music learning and development in family, community, and school settings including general and specialized school environments. Authors trace the trajectories of development within and across cultures and settings and identify those factors that facilitate or constrain children’s early music learning and development.
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online. For more information, please read the site FAQs.
El arte, sin necesidad de estar en escenarios terapéuticos, diplomáticos o de lucha social, siempre es transformador y siempre tiene una dimensión económica, social y cultural. La transformación social implica necesariamente un cambio de perspectiva y la transformación de universos sensibles. Si no hay un cambio de visión, no hay una transformación social. Pero, ¿qué implica un cambio de visión y en general, una construcción desde otra sensibilidad? Cambiar los universos sensibles en los procesos de educación artística para transformar contextos de violencia y vulnerabilidad, significa ir más allá de lo que percibimos en la superficie de los procesos; significa comprender la complejidad de los contextos sociales, los “pluriversos” y lo mucho que éstos tienen que aportar en la construcción de los nuevos sentidos en las expresiones estéticas y los procesos de arte para la transformación.
This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note that the online publication date for this handbook is the date that the first article in the title was published online. For more information, please read the site FAQs.
This paper argues that ethnomusicology has trended away from analysing music sound and, consequently, has not distinguished between two distinct-yet-complementary modes of attention, namely the multimodal cognition associated with mousike and the more 'teleomusical' (music-directed) attention associated with music. Building on (1) research on music in ancient Greece and China, (2) studies on multimodal perception, (3) the discovery of teleomusical perception in infants, and (4) three contemporary case studies, this paper concludes that mousike and music may be best understood as endpoints on a continuum of musical engagement. Mousike requires attending to the synergistic interaction among competing modalities, such as the linguistic, musical, visual, and kinesthetic, whereas music involves a greater amount of 'technologizing' in 'extending' musical cognition (extended mind thesis), requiring an attentive shift towards music sound. Founded on stages in infant development, the adult processes of attending to mousike and music must be ascertained through analysis, which can, nevertheless, present both challenges and advantages. The challenges are the biases that can emerge from the music-directed emphasis of ethnomusicological training, which may impede our ability to attend to other competing modalities in performance; the advantages are the revelatory insights that can only come from attending to music sound.
Studies within evolutionary musicology and ontogenetic development propose an intimate relation between the quality of the human voice, the rhythm of interactional patterns (e.g. the alternation between repetition and improvisation), the origins of aesthetics, and the characteristics of performances within the temporal arts. Focusing on the role of auditory perception in children's development of narrative skills, this article similarly proposes an intimate relation between children's voices in interaction, their imitative use of formulaic and genre-specific language, and their creative and aesthetically attuned written compositions. The notion of voice opens up a productive and coherent approach to investigating how children interactionally and imitatively come to develop a command and reflexive understanding of spoken and written genres. The discussion is based on a full ethnography of children's acquisition of written language during their second school year.
Can music be a liberating practice in prison? Can release from prison still lead to imprisonment in a ‘prison of freedom’? Can a past as a criminal become a resource? Can exclusion from society imply inclusion in a culture of rock music? If one rejects to be a group of self-help does it nevertheless imply that one receives help and support from each other in a rock band? In this article these paradoxes are discussed based on the doctoral theses Innanfor og utanfor – Rockens rolle innan kriminalomsorg og ettervern (Tuastad 2014a). The thesis is based on experiences from the Norwegian project ”Music in Custody and Liberty”, and on an action research project with the rock band Me and the BAND’its. In addition to the findings in the thesis, the topic is analyzed with theory from community music therapy and socio-cultural perspectives.
This paper explores some of the changed relationships between body and environment that occur when instruments are augmented by electronic or digital circuits. Taking Gregory Bateson’s theorisation of the schizophrenic body (1973) as its starting point, the paper explores situations in which the relationship between the performer, body, and instrument takes on increasingly separate communicational modes, in which the body and its meanings come to resemble the ‘unlabelled metaphor’ of the schizophrenic. A series of instrument/personas are brought before us, representing both the ‘norm’ of acoustic instrumental performances and the extreme limits of instrumental identity, offering critical insight into the space that augmented instruments occupy and transform. In considering some of these changes, and in reaching towards their extremities, attention is paid to the friction or awkwardness that accompanies the metamorphosis. In the same way that the ability of a language to ‘point’ is fraught with inconsistencies and potentials for misunderstanding, so the transformation in instrumental identities does not happen in a smooth and transparent way. However, the changes do create the potential for new sensibilities and forms of critical and ethical awareness.
The connection between babies and adults is permeated by a communicative musicality that manifests in different ways. Three of these manifestations are relevant to social cognitive development: infant-directed improvised performances, protoconversations, and action songs. They typify the first social and multimodal exchanges that allow adults and babies to share moments of deep intimacy and affection. While protoconversations are extensively studied interaction in developmental psychology and action songs are widely known, infant-directed improvised performances have only recently been identified. The three variants of these exchanges are brought together as a unitary category under the name of emergent organizations of early communicative musicality. The chapter presents a longitudinal case study of a mother–baby dyad between the 2nd and 9th month of the baby, analyzing the structure, frequency, and developmental trajectory of these three emergent organizations. It also describes the various ways in which multimodal stimulation is organized in each of them.KeywordsProtoconversationsAction songCommunicative musicalityInfant-directed improvised performanceDanceMusic
Congenital amusia (CA) is a disorder of pitch perception, a core function of the human auditory system. A total of seventeen amusics, fitting stringent criteria in Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA), and fourteen healthy controls participated in our study. Here, we aimed to characterize a local resting state functional measure, regional homogeneity (ReHo) to evaluate abnormal local consistency of the neurons spontaneous activity in CA group compared with the healthy control group. We focused on potential brain areas with significant differences between the two groups. The partial correlation analyses applied to ReHo values as well as scores of MBEA subtests. The CA group showed a significant decrease ReHo values in the left postcentral gyrus and left middle cingulum cortex when compared to controls. The ReHo values of those two significant regions were both positively correlated with MBEA scores. All in all, this study identified brain regions which were not discussed previously that may partly contribute to or be modulated by CA.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.