Elementary school, middle school, high school, and trainable mentally handicapped students' response to four western art music selections.

摘要

The purpose of the study was to provide insight into the musical responsiveness of different aged students. A listening activity was developed to measure likeability of pre-selected excerpts in different performance media.; One-hundred-and-sixty-three subjects, students from grades 2, 5, 8, 11/12, and trainable mentally handicapped (TMH) students, participated in the study. Students listened to excerpts from Puccini's La Boheme, Haydn's Symphony no. 104, Mozart's Vesperae Solennes, and Holst's First Suite in E{dollar}spflat{dollar}, while simultaneously manipulating a Continuous Response Digital Interface (CRDI) dial, indicating their responses to the music. Overlays used with the CRDI dial were developed specifically for the groups tested and included a pictographic scale continuum, used with elementary-school and TMH subjects, and a positive continuum used with middle-school and high-school subjects.; Data analyses included individual graphs for TMH subjects and collective temporal graphs for the other students grouped by grade level. Results indicated that (1) second-grade youngsters rated all excerpts higher than did the other groups, and (2) that instrumental music examples were rated higher compared to the vocal music examples. Though TMH students were generally able to respond to the first step of a pretest, many had difficulty differentiating their response over time. Results concur with findings reported in music preference research literature.