Effect of Parent/Child Group Music Activities on Toddler Development: A Pilot Study

ABSTRACT: The purpose of this study was to ascertain the effects of structured group music activities on childhood development prior to age 2 years. Toddlers between 12 and 24 months of age participated in group music activities with their caregiver and developmental responses were observed. There were two inclusive groups combining typically developing children with children considered at-risk of developmental delay due to premature birth. Eleven toddlers were observed during the first music session attended. Another 11 toddlers were observed after attendance at four to seven music sessions. The two groups were balanced for gender and matched for age at time of observation to rule out developmental differences due to chronological age. The dependent variable was a developmental checklist designed by the authors with 29 observable items including communicative, cognitive, social, motor, and music skills. Results showed that participation in four to seven music sessions significantly increased higher level developmental skills. Significantly more children in the music group demonstrated higher level music and cognitive skills than did those in the control group. Future research should pursue these findings with larger sample sizes and consider long term implications. The nonmusic research literature has rarely addressed benefits of structured group activities for young toddlers. The body of research concerning infants between birth and age 2 years has primarily been conducted through individual observation, mother-infant paired interactions, or small groups of infants in independent play (Walworth, 2006a). Such research in child development does offer important insight into the learning abilities of infants; however, Columbo (2001 ) asserts that infant attentiveness begins at birth and proceeds on a continuum from increased alertness levels (waking vs. sleeping) to spatial orienting skill (visual attention on a specific locus in the environment) to the ability to disengage from one locus and shift to another. Between 2 to 6 months of age, the typically developing infant will demonstrate endogenous attention, which is the ability to alternate attention between two fixed stimuli. At 6 months, it has been noted that bursts of such rapid shifts occur just prior to discriminative learning (Columbo, 2001). At 1 year of age, research has shown that the faster these looks and shifts occur, the faster encoding and comparisons between stimuli are made by the infant (Rose, Feldman & Jankowski, 2004). At this age, infant cognition is multidimensional and characterized by visual recognition memory, attention, and speed or reaction time to stimuli. At approximately 1 year, infants begin demonstrating skills that lend themselves to structured learning activities and group participation. At 12 months of age, infants will respond to adult cuing. Seventy percent will follow an adult's gaze while 81% will follow an adult's point (Thoermer & Sodian, 2001). Attention span remains short with emphasis on endogenous attention to changing stimuli (Thoermer & Sodian, 2001). Previously, absence of research with very young infants had led experts to believe that around 6 months of age a shift occurred in infant learning with the child moving from passive awareness of environmental stimuli to the ability to interact and discriminate. Recent research in memory processing shows that infant cognition is multidimensional and a continuous process from birth through the second year of life that is irrespective of task, whether operant learning or imitation of others (Hsu & Rovee-Collier, 2006). The fundamental mechanisms of learning are the same throughout this time period; therefore, the importance of early experience on cognitive development has increased with emphasis on multidimensional opportunity for learning. Group music experiences for toddlers would seem to be a highly effective way to offer such multidimensional sensory opportunities by combining auditory, visual, and tactile stimuli. …