Children's Verbal, Visual, and Kinesthetic Responses: Insight into Their Music ListeningExperience

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Children's Verbal, Visual, and Kinesthetic Responses: Insight into Their Music ListeningExperience Author(s): Jody L. Kerchner Source: Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, No. 146 (Fall, 2000), pp. 31-50Published by: on behalf of the University of Illinois Press Council for Research in Music

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Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education Fall, 2000, No. 146

Children's Verbal, Visual, and Kinesthetic Responses: Insight into Their Music Listening Experience

Jody L Kerchner Oberlin College Conservatory of Music Oberlin, Ohio

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine cognitive processes made manifest during the repeated listening to a musical example by second- and fifth-grade students. More specifically, I explored patterns that emerged from the content of the verbal, visual, and kinesthetic responses during music listening, when children were compared by grade.

Twelve students (six in second-grade and six in fifth-grade) met with me for two, 30-minute interview sessions. They were asked to listen to an excerpt from Bachs Brandenburg Concerto No. 2inF, 1st movement and perform verbal, visual, and kinesthetic tasks. First, the students provided a concurrent verbal protocol of the listening experience. Each student listened to the same piece of music a third time and provided a visual representation - a drawn map - of their listening experience. Then the students verbally described what they had drawn. They were also asked to guide me through their music listening experience by pointing to the map as they listened to the excerpt.

The final portion of the interview consisted of the students listening to the musical example and providing kinesthetic descriptions of their music listening experience. After this task, the students viewed the videotape of their movements and verbally described them in relation to the musical example.

To obtain a sense of consistency among their responses, I met with each student for a second interview session. The procedure, script, and musical example from the first interview were also used during the second meeting. At the conclusion of the second session, I presented the students with semistructured interview questions, that prompted students to clarify or expand their verbal, drawn, and movement descriptions.

Data analysis began with the examination of details gleaned from the individual student interviews and then the children as a member of a larger group - as second-graders or fifth-graders. I compared the perceptual and affective content and growth of the children 's responses rendered in each of the three response modalities. The content of the children 's responses in each sensory mode was compiled and then considered by grade, using the following "lenses " in order to interpret their responses:

-perceptual responses (responses dealing with formal musical elements or the performance of the music) -affective responses (responses related to musical mood, preference, emotion, evaluation of the music) -use of incorrect or correct musical terms -style of thinking: linear (sequential account of musical events or affective response) or non-linear (non-sequential account of musical events or affective response) -degree of differentiation (degree of detail in the responses)

31



32 Kerchner

Findings:

-Fifth-graders used more sophisticated thinking strategies in order to provide descriptions of more differentiated musical information. Fifth-graders tended to search for standard musical labels, although they often chose incorrect terminology to describe the musical selection. -Fifth-graders exhibited more responses indicative of affective response. More fifth-graders explained that their responses were guided by the music - an indication of aesthetic response to the musical events. -Children, regardless of grade, compared the Bach excerpt to prior musical experience (performance and listening). -Verbal responses provided the foundation for all children's visual and kinesthetic responses. Fifth-graders provided more diverse topics which were also less programmatic in the verbal mode. -Second-graders

' visual responses were less differentiated than fifth-graders ' visual re-

sponses. -Children's style of mapping varied according to grade level. Second-graders tended to draw pictures; fifth-graders used words and combinations of markings to describe the music listening experience. -Visual and kinesthetic modes of response elicited the description of more differentiated musical events than the verbal response mode. -Children in both grades used alternate modes of response to describe perceptual information. -More fifth-graders than second-graders were "kinesthetic listeners. "

-Style of thinking for all children varied per mode of response, although linearity of thinking was more readily visible in fifth-graders

' responses. The kinesthetic mode of response best

captured children 's linear thinking patterns.

The Study

Music listeners create and recreate their own musical experience by perceiving musical elements through sensory modalities. This is done, in

large part, by focusing on one or several musical elements, creating relation-

ships among the elements, and then responding to those musical relationships. The ability to perceive musical sounds, order them, and reshape extant musical structures is only part of an aesthetic musical experience. The other essential component is a person's ability to respond to the music in a mean-

ingful manner. Assuming that the cognitive aspects of music listening can be

developed by means of sequentially and developmentally appropriate listen-

ing activities provided in the music classroom, it seems that educators would find it necessary to search for insights into the processes by which students

perceive, process, and respond to music. Such insight might enable them to accommodate and facilitate the development of individual students' listening skills and musical concept formation.

Mandler (1984) described mental representations of knowledge as theo- retical constructs that "cause or generate the observable thoughts [and] ac- tions" of a person (p. 10). Many researchers recognize the valuable musical and cognitive information children provide through their drawn repre-



Children's Verbal, Visual, and Kinesthetic Response 33

sentations, kinesthetic responses, or verbal descriptions of musical events. These responses might be considered externalized representations of internal

cognitive schemes. Research studies exist that probe the music listening and critical thinking processes of music critics (Richardson, 1988), composers and performers (Whitaker, 1989), musical experts (Zerull, 1993), and children (Bickel, 1991; Bundra, 1993; Dunn, 1994; Stubley, 1989) using verbal

protocol analysis. These researchers found that they were able to gain access into their subjects' music listening thought processes by asking them to talk about the music while they were listening to or immediately after they had listened to musical examples.

Children's use of visual representations and kinesthetic gestures as cognitive metaphors ofthat which is experienced during music listening has been a topic of several research studies (Cohen, 1980; Sims, 1985). Dunn (1994) investigated the effect of kinesthetic, along with visual, reinforcements as

perceptual aides for children as they listened to music. Researchers (Bamber- ger, 1991; Davidson, Scripp, & Welsh, 1988; Hildebrandt, 1985; Upitis, 1992) explored children's invented notations of familiar melodies, self-com-

posed pieces, and isolated melodic and rhythmic patterns. More recently, researchers have begun to investigate children's multisen-

sory responses to a listening example (Bennett, 1981; Domer & Gromko, 1995; Dunn, 1994; Espeland, 1987). Children's responses in one mode of

representation were compared to responses rendered, in other modes in order for the researcher to formulate a comprehensive picture of the children's

understanding of a concept. Researchers, particularly those who conduct

qualitative research, are recognizing data, verbal and nonverbal, as viable sources of robust information.

What do the multisensory data seem to indicate about listening skill and musical concept formation development? Espeland's (1987) work on the

"Norwegian Project" supported the notion that repeated listening and multis-

ensory (verbal, visual, and kinesthetic) responses to a musical example is essential if students are to grasp and formulate its personal meaning. From his observations of children engaged in the multisensory response tasks,

Espeland proposed a sequence of responsive listening. He suggested that music leaves children with an impression (inner reaction) that eventually leads to the association, imagination, selection, arrangement, and organiza- tion of musical sounds internally; these internal operations lead to expression, in terms of overt responses. The final part of this sequence includes rear-

rangement, justification, comparison, processing,rejection, and acceptance, which returns the cycle back to the impression level (p. 289).

The findings of Zimmerman's research, although not gathered from

multisensory data, also indicate an identifiable and predictable progression of



34 Kerchner

musical concept development. Zimmerman and Sechrest (1968) also found that children across various age levels did not have the vocabulary necessary to provide adequate and accurate descriptions of the musical stimuli. A product of her research, Zimmerman (1981) formulated a sequence of musical concept development. Listed as the musical concepts developed earliest in a child's life to those developed later in childhood, the order of development progresses from volume, timbre, tempo, duration, to pitch and harmony. The discrimination of these musical elements becomes more refined as a child becomes more familiar with a musical example, that is through repeated music listening.

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to examine cognitive processes made manifest during the repeated listening to a musical example by second- and fifth-grade students. More specifically, I explored patterns that emerged from the content of the verbal, visual, and kinesthetic responses during music listening, when children were compared by grade (Kerchner, 1996).

Procedure

Several years ago, I was a part-time music instructor at a neighborhood elementary school situated in an affluent northern suburban community of

Chicago. This K-5 school is noted nationally for its implementation of and contribution to the progressive education philosophy of John Dewey. The teachers, parents, and community members consider this school to be a model of "child-centered" instruction. Because music listening and the discussion of musical pieces were incorporated into almost every class meeting at each grade level, I wanted to conduct my study within this elementary school setting. Students were accustomed to listening to musics from around the world and performing tasks in conjunction with their listening experience. I also wanted to maintain and utilize a familiar educational setting for both the researcher and participants. I considered it important that the students felt comfortable in performing the music listening tasks in the presence of a familiar person.

At the beginning of the school year, a questionnaire was distributed to all second- and fifth-grade students in the elementary school. It was a student musical background survey that became a part of the students' musical portfolio at school. The parents and students were asked to discuss and complete the survey together. The survey asked the parents to describe their child's




preference for various musical styles and their concert attendance and at- home listening habits. In addition, the parents were asked to describe their child's involvement in musical performing groups and any private musical instruction the child may have received or was currently receiving that was outside the school. The final question on the musical background form

required the parents to rate their child's preference for listening to music, drawing, and movement.

The questionnaire allowed rne to create a pool from which six students from both grade levels were chosen from those currently engaged in some form of extracurricular musical instruction and those not receiving extracurricular musical instruction. Several other factors entered into the selection

process of the study participants: their availability to participate during the time allotted for the data-gathering procedures, permission granted by their

parents, amount of contact the students had with me in class, and classroom and music teacher recommendations. Twelve participants were chosen for this study: 6 who were in second grade (3 having extracurricular music

instruction, 3 having no extracurricular music instruction) and 6 who were in fifth grade (3 having extracurricular music instruction, 3 having no extracurricular music instruction).

Each participant met with me for two, 30-minute interview sessions.

They were asked to listen to an excerpt from Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F, 1st movement, and perform verbal, visual, and kinesthetic tasks.

According to Zimmerman and Sechrest (1968), children typically do not have access to adequate terms for describing musical sound. Therein was the

importance of providing the participants with the opportunity todescribe their music listening experience with visual and kinesthetic means in addition to the verbal descriptions.

First, the students provided a concurrent verbal protocol of the listening experience. Each student listened to the same piece of music a third time and

provided a visual representation - a drawn map - of their listening experience. After the mapping was completed, the students verbally described what

they had drawn. Then they were asked to guide me through their music

listening experience by pointing to the map as they listened to the excerpt. The final portion of the interview consisted of the students listening to the

musical example and providing kinesthetic descriptions of their music listen-

ing experience. After this task, the students viewed the videotape of their movements and verbally described them in relation to the musical example.

To obtain a sense of consistency among their responses, I met with each student for a second interview session. The procedure, script, and musical

example from the first interview were also used during the second meeting. At the conclusion of the second session, I presented the students with semi-



36 Kerchner

structured interview questions, that prompted students to clarify or expand their verbal, drawn, and movement descriptions.

Data analysis began with the examination of details gleaned from the individual student interviews. I gradually pulled back the microscopic lens so that I could scrutinize individual children as a member of a larger group - as

second-graders or fifth-graders. I compared the perceptual and affective content of the children's responses rendered in each of the three response modalities - verbal, visual, and kinesthetic. The content of the children's

responses in each sensory mode was compiled and then considered by grade, using the following "lenses" that appeared in other visual arts and music education research studies having similar research purposes and methodologi- cal designs (Bundra, 1993; Carothers & Gardner, 1979; Davidson, Scripp, &

Welsh, 1988; Dunn, 1994; Gardner, 1980; Goodman, 1976; Goodnow, 1977; Parsons, 1976): • perceptual responses (responses dealing with formal musical elements or

the performance of the music) • affective responses (responses related to musical mood, preference, emo-

tion, evaluation of the music) • use of incorrect or correct musical terms • style of thinking: linear (sequential account of musical events or affective

response) or non-linear (non-sequential account of musical events or affective response)

• degree of differentiation (degree of detail in the responses)

Although this paper reports only the comparison of students' perceptual and affective responses by grade level, additional analyses of the data considered the effect of private music instruction on students' responses, the effect of repeated listening on students' responses, the development of responses during repeated listenings, students' responses alluding to metacognition, repleteness of response, and higher-order thinking skills that were engaged and made manifest in students' verbal, visual, and kinesthetic responses.

Response Trends

Perceptual

Combining the responses from the children's verbal, visual, and kinesthetic modes, most of the second- and fifth-graders rendered more perceptual than affective information during their interview process. The most popular perceptual topics that were addressed by both grade levels were: instrument, register, continuous motion, formal sections, repetition, dynamics, tempo,




contour, and pattern. These topics are global musical events that are typically learned in any general music classroom or private musical instructional set-

ting. Perceptual topics that were visited by the entire group of students, but

which were not frequently represented, included: change, melodic rhythm, melody, tone quality, foreground/background listening, solo/tutti sections, identification of historical period, comparison of timbres, and identification of composer. These topics of response required students to recall factual information in their comparative searches from prior musicalexperience. In

addition, these topics represented the children's conception of musical detail. The same number of children from each grade addressed the perceptual

topics. However, more fifth-graders than second-graders addressed the fol-

lowing topics: repetition, formal sections, articulation, texture, duration, and

melody. These perceptual topics required thinking about musical structure using

analytical and reconstructive thinking skills. The process of determining musical structural features required students to implement both linear and non-linear thinking skills in order to compare and determine musical segments or sections that repeated. Students had to maintain musical material in

memory while they continued to listen to the linear progression of the music.

They also needed to extract musical segments that were not juxtaposed and then compare and evaluate their similarity or difference. Thus, age might influence the ability to use these types of cognitive processes - comparison and analysis.

Affective

Comparable numbers of students in both grades addressed these topics: musical mood, musical preference, and evaluation. More fifth-graders than

second-graders, however, provided evidence of affective response in their

verbal, visual, and kinesthetic representations. This could be related to the fact that second-graders provided more referential information in which de-

piction of affect was embedded within an image or story. Perhaps the fifth-

graders' descriptions of affective response were more overt than the second-

graders' descriptions. Perhaps the fifth-grade students were more aware of their reaction to the musical experience than were the second-graders.



38 Kerchner

Prior Musical Experience

Prior musical experience seemed to play an important role for both grade levels. Children compared the musical example and the tasks that they encountered during the interviews with prior musical experience, that included both performance experience and music listening experience. Chil- dren used comparative thinking strategies in order to place the musical exam-

ple amidst their prototypical musical schemes maintained internally. A similar number of students in each grade included descriptions of their

prior musical experience in relation to the music listening tasks. The only major difference between grade levels was in the number of students who

compared the Bach excerpt with other musical styles with which they were familiar. Twice as many fifth-graders than second-graders addressed this

topic. By the very nature of being older, the fifth-graders probably had more

exposure to stylistically diverse musics and, therefore, could label and com-

pare features of the musical excerpt to features associated with specific musical styles that they had encountered.

Trends Related to Grade Within Response Modes

Verbal Responses

The verbal response mode enabled the children in both grades to provide information about their thinking processes that was not evident in their visual and kinesthetic representations. It was in this mode that the children could best exhibit their evaluative and comparative skills. The concurrent verbal

reporting task also allowed the children to indulge in the stories and images they associated with the musical excerpt.

It was also in the verbal mode of response that the children created new terms to describe their music listening experience. Many of these terms or

phrases remained mysterious, until I observed the children's visual and kinesthetic responses. I was more secure in drawing meaning from the children's

vague verbal descriptors, after I had viewed their responses from the visual and kinesthetic tasks.

Information presented during the concurrent verbal reporting task provided the foundation for the information that the children presented in their visual and kinesthetic responses. Verbal information was usually incorporated into the children's visual and kinesthetic responses, with the addition of detail and new information. The verbal reports typically contained descriptions of global musical events, whereas the visual and kinesthetic modes



Children's Verbal, Visual, and Kinesthctic Response _39

contained descriptions of more differentiated musical events. Fifth-grade students provided more diversified information. Whereas the second-grade students tended tofocus on two primary topics of response (instrumental timbres and referential associations), the fifth-graders tended to provide information about several topics. This might be a loose indication of the centra- tion and decentration abilities described by Piaget and Zimmerman.

Fifth-grade participants' verbal descriptions reflected a level of listening that required comparative and analytical insights that went beneath the sur- face of the global musical events. Whereas the second-graders described instruments, the fifth-graders described how the instrumental parts related to each other (texture). They also described the process of performing and the skill required to perform the musical instruments.

The fifth-graders also displayed more evidence of affect in their concurrent verbal reports than the second-grade participants. Three fifth-graders described their music listening experience during the concurrent verbal reporting task with words or phrases associated with affective response. For example, Bill described his musical preference and the musical mood; he described the music as "nice," "fun," "playful," "not sad," and "neat." He also stated that he "liked" certain features of the musical excerpt including the different instruments, the different beats, and the different melodies.

Affect was also exhibited in Terri' s comments that described how the music made her feel. She began many of her sentences with the phrases, "It [the musical excerpt] makes me feel. . ." or "It [the music] makes me want. . . " She concluded these phrases with words and phrases such as "like jumping," "to tap my foot," and "to dance." She also described the musical mood as "good," "great," "joyful," "happy," and "playful."

Kathy provided the most affective information. She continually described how the music made her feel as she listened to it. "I feel" was followed by: "like Muppet Baby Christmas" "like leaves," "like at a wed- ding," "like I'm not in school," "like someone's lonely," "like playing the violin," "like playing the flute," "like they're floating," "tired," "like jumping," "like dancing," and "happy." Kathy 's primary comparison of the music was not to prior musical experience but rather to emotions associated with personal, non-musical experience. It was intriguing that the music made her "feel" like inanimate objects or things that are not typically considered to be "emotions."

Visual Responses

The process of drawing maps during the music listening experience enabled children in both grades to depict more detail than they depicted in the



40 Kerchner

verbal response mode, specifically in their description of musical texture, beat, embellishment, form, contour, melodic rhythm, and duration. Their

mapping product was not the only piece that shed light on the details of their

perceptions. I relied on reviewing their drawing process - the children's verbal descriptions of their maps, and the pointing and listening tasks - to

clarify my speculations. The visual mode of response also provided a means for depicting the

students' awareness of standard music notation. Several children in both

grades used standard music symbols in order to signify features of the musical sound or to decorate the map in conjunction with their associations.

Although there were fewer hints of affective response displayed on the children's maps, the fifth-graders depicted musical mood and beat, through their written words or phrases on their maps. Contour and instruments were recurrent topics on the second-graders' maps. Three of the second-graders depicted referential information, "pictures,

" whereas only one fifth-grader's maps were primarily referential.

Second-grade participants included more pictures and drawings than the

fifth-graders (Figure 1). Although several of the second-graders' maps primarily consisted of pictures of perceptual and referential information, the

fifth-graders included only a few drawings along with information depicted by other visual means (words, notation, graphs, markings).

Figure 1 . Second-grader's map of musical association.

Fifth-grade children used more words on their maps than the second-

graders (Figure 2). Lauren was a second-grade outlier in this area, because she primarily used words on her map to describe the music listening experi-



Children's Verbal, Visual, and Kinesthetic Response 4]

enee. Bill, a fifth-grader, was another outlier; he was the only participant whose maps consisted only of words. Although thesecond-graders inter-

preted the "drawing task" as an opportunity to draw pictures of perceptual and referential information, the fifth-graders did not view the task as an art

project. They continued the concurrent verbal reporting task into the visual

reporting task. Instead of talking aloud, however, they wrote about their

thoughts, perceptions, and affective responses on their maps.

Figure 2. Fifth-grader's map containing verbal information.

Four of the students were "graphers" (Figure 3). These students provided limited verbal information about their music listening experience. Yet

through the process of creating graphs on their drawn maps, they shed light on subtleties that they perceived and, consciously or unconsciously, responded to in the musical excerpt. All of the graphs focused on musical contour. In

addition, I observed melodic rhythm depicted in the process of the students' creation of their graphs.

Because of the lack of differentiation that appeared within the maps, the children had difficulty following their maps during the pointing and listening task. The children had drawn the maps during the "musical moment," the

experience that was difficult to retrace and recreate when the listening was

repeated. Occasionally, the children moved from one area of their graph to the next, instead of following the continuous line of the graphs as they had

initially drawn them.



42 Kerchner

Figure 3. Map using graphing technique.

Kinesthetic Responses

The kinesthetic mode of response, like the visual mode, elicited detailed musical information from some of the children in each grade level. Differen- tiated topics that were evident in both grade levels included: beat, subdivided beat, articulation, melodic rhythm, embellishment, duration, style, phrase, subphrases and motivic fragments, contour, form, and pattern. Many of these

topics were also evident as I observed the children's mapping and their

performance in the pointing and listening task. Both tasks required the students to move parts of their body and to react to the music as they described their music listening experience.

The kinesthetic response mode did not, however, lend itself to the depiction of affect, except for that which I interpreted as the depiction of musical mood. Children who presented kinesthetic renditions of their verbal and visual programmatic or kinesthetic associations tended to convey elements of affective response, especially through their facial expression. Madison used his hands in his descriptions of the "sleeping" music, whereas Maribeth created a kinesthetic scenario that included a dancer who was occasionally sad.

Six children moved their entire body across the space that was allotted for the movement task, whereas other students' body motion was contained to one spot of the movement area. The fifth-grade males tended to use reserved foot and arm movements as they remained in one place in the movement area.



Children's Verbal, Visual, and Kincsthetic Response 43

The fifth-grade females used their entire body in the entire movement area. One second-grade student (Peter) created a gymnastics routine as he listened to the Bach excerpt.

Two of the fifth-grade participants (Maribeth and Kathy) chose to depict their music listening experience by pretending to be the conductor of the orchestra that played the musical excerpt. Through their conducting gestures, I observed their reaction to melodic rhythm, dynamics, articulation, beat, subdivided beat, phrase, subphrase, embellishment, and the families of instruments in the orchestra. They chose a musical activity - conducting - to describe that which they perceived and responded to musically.

Kathy and Maribeth, along with Michele and Terri, were kinesthetic outliers. That is, they chose continuous motion that enabled them to react, consciously or unconsciously, to the musical events as they unfolded. Their

gestures were replete with detailed musical information that they did not verbally describe. These students, three of whom were fifth-graders, provided more information through their kinesthetic responses than the other second- and fifth-grade students.

Alternate Response Modes

For some participants, the verbal, visual, and kinesthetic responses were not adequate means of representing their music listening experience. Some children reverted to musicalmeans of expressing that which they heard, thought, or felt during the interview sessions. For five children, singing was an alternate mode of explanation, when the other modes proved to be insuffi- cient tools for musical description. Instead of translating musical sound into non-musical symbol systems, these children explained musical sound with musical means.

Two second-graders and three fifth-graders sang as they described the Bach excerpt. The most frequent use of singing occurred as the students

attempted to verbally describe rhythmic and/or melodic features of the primary thematic material in the excerpt; the children sang parts of the melodic material to illustrate their perceptions. Furthermore, other children sang in order to convey their perception of trills and repeated notes and to compare the musical excerpt to a piece of music from a previous music listening experience outside of the interview context.

One fifth-grader and two second-graders used vocal sounds in order to shed light on their visual responses. These students used vocal sounds to

explain their perception of embellishments, to demonstrate playing an instrument, and to explain the programmatic features of their drawings.



44 Kerchner

Because David found it difficult to find the correct term for the "shrill flute" (trumpet trill), he used his voice to demonstrate the fluttering sound of the trill. He also used "eh, eh, ch" sounds to illustrate the tone quality of the "cymbals" (actually the harpsichord) that played in the background of the musical excerpt. Michele, who provided the least amount of verbal information during the concurrent verbal reports, also used "doi-oi-oing" to describe the "shakier" parts of the music, perhaps also the trills. In addition, she used a glottal "uh-uh-uh" sound to illustrate the sound of a bow moving across the violin strings. Peter used howling "oooh" sounds in his explanation of the ghosts he had drawn on his map.

I considered the students who repeatedly employed action descriptors to exhibit kinesthetic listening. They used words including "bouncy," "swingy," "back and forth," "circle," "running," "jumping," "dancing," "drinking," "having a joy," "flow," and "running," "wigglier," "shakier," "hopping," "shivering," "floating," "playing," "composing," "dancing," "coming in," "coming out," and "walking" to describe their what they perceived and responded to in the musical excerpt.

From these participants of this study, it appeared that children sought multiple modes of representation to describe that which was non-verbal - music. Even when they were asked to provide responses using only one response mode, they mixed the modes of response. Some children used vocal sounds and singing as an additional mode of description, because they might have lacked adequate musical vocabulary to describe their perceptions. Musical sound, for some children, might have been the only viable means of describing musical sound.

Degree of Differentiation

Of the six second-grade participants, all of their descriptions of the musical excerpt were global; that is, most of their responses contained rela- tively few details about the musical events as they unfolded. Most of their descriptions remained at a very general level of description. Whereas Peter and Madison presented mostly global descriptions of the music in each of the three modes of response, the other second-grade participants showed some evidence of musical detail in their kinesthetic and visual responses.

Fifth-graders' verbal, visual, and kinesthetic responses generally exhibited more detail than the second-graders' responses. Similar to the second- graders, the visual and kinesthetic responses for most of the fifth-graders included a greater degree of detailed description than their verbal reports.

The visual and kinesthetic modes of response enabled students to depict musical nuance and subtlety that they could not or decided not to depict in the



Children's Verbal, Visual, and Kincsthetic Response 45

verbal mode. In order to convey musical detail that was represented in the visual and kinesthetic modes of response, the children would have had to utilize a fairly sophisticated musical vocabulary. Because the visual and kinesthetic modes of response did not rely on verbal descriptors of the music, musical detail was depicted, consciously or unconsciously, in theprocess of drawing and moving Whereas listening to the Bach excerpt. The visual and kinesthetic modes of response enabled children to depict detail that they otherwise could not depict using verbal means. I determined the relationship between the visual and kinesthetic responses and musical features through inference. From my observation of the drawing and movement process and, ironically, from the children's verbal descriptions of these responses, I began to understand the music in relation to the children's responses.

Style of Thinking

According to the participants' presentation of verbal, visual, and kinesthetic responses, children at different grade levels exhibited qualitatively different styles of thinking. Of the second-grade participants, I noted that only one child displayed linear thinking patterns in his verbal, visual, and kinesthetic responses. I determined that only one child exhibited non-linear thinking features in her verbal, visual, and kinesthetic responses. Another child exhibited non-linear thinking patterns in the visual and verbal modes of

response with hints of linearity emerging during the kinesthetic gesture task. The remaining second-grade participants' thinking strategies varied in each

response mode. The kinesthetic mode of response was the mode in which linearity of

thinking could be best observed. This mode of response either demanded or allowed the second- and fifth-grade children to display features of linear thinking that were not depicted in the other modes. Children reacted to the music as it occurred in real-time. The movement task involved less transla- tion time than the verbal and visual tasks that generally featured the children's non-linear thinking strategies. The time that the children required to search for adequate terms during the concurrent verbal reporting, to draw an image, or to create a scene did not facilitate linear thinking. The words or drawings captured the global essence of the music rather than a moment-to-moment account of the music as it unfolded.



46 Kerchncr

Terminology

Many of the children searched their memory base for specific terms, standard musical terms, with which they could label events in the musical

excerpt. The participants searched for names of specific instruments and

stylistic periods. Some children also applied the term "orchestra" in their identification of the ensemble that performed the recorded musical excerpt. Six students (two second-graders and four fifth-graders) employed standard musical terminology and/or standard musical notation symbols in their de-

scriptions of the musical excerpt. Occasionally, however, the notational

symbols represented decoration and general knowledge of musical notation, rather than specific musical meaning derived from the Bach excerpt.

Frequently, the participants used descriptors and labels that were either incorrect or vague. Second-graders tended to use incorrectly the following terms: instrumental names, tempo, register (high/low), dynamics (loud/soft), musical genres, and formal sectional patterns. Fifth-graders most frequently provided inaccurate names for musical instruments that they perceived. Other terms that they used incorrectly were: tempo, dynamics, register. Fifth-grade children also used these musical terms incorrectly: composing instead of

conducting, shrill instead of trill, and dynamics instead of contour. The

fifth-grade students misused musical terms or labels more than the second-

grade students.

Fifth-graders also used vague terms in their descriptions of the musical

example. This was especially true when the participants used kinesthetic

descriptors such as "wigglier," "shakier," "swizzles," "circles," "back and

forth," "swingy," "wavy," "twirly," and "spiraling." Some of these descriptions remained unclear, despite my consideration of the participants' re-

sponses in all three modes. I gained understanding of some of these phrases through my observations

of the participants' task performance in the pointing and listening, drawing, and movement tasks - non-verbal information. Descriptions that obviously had meaning to the participants, but that were confusing to me, included

"long, shrill flute" (flute trills in a solo section), "notes bunched together" (melodic rhythm of an embellishment), "differentmelodies with different beats" (texture), and "rhythm easy to follow" (beat).




Summary of Findings

From my interpretation of the children's verbal, visual, and kinesthetic responses in light of grade, I found the following trends to emerge from the participants' responses in this study: • Fifth-graders used more sophisticated thinking strategies in order to pro-

vide descriptions of more differentiated musical information. Fifth-graders tended to search for standard musical labels, although they often chose incorrect terminology to describe the musical selection. Second-graders provided less information about the formal properties of the music.

• Fifth- graders exhibited more responses indicative of affective response. More fifth-graders explained that their responses were guided by the music - an indication of aesthetic response to the musical events.

• Children, regardless of grade, compared the Bach excerpt to prior musical experience (performance and listening).

• Verbal responses provided the foundation for all children's visual and kinesthetic responses. Fifth-graders provided more diverse topics that were also less programmatic in the verbal mode.

• Second-graders' visual responses were less differentiated than fifth-graders' visual responses.

• Children's style of mapping varied according to grade level. Second- graders tended to draw pictures; fifth-graders used words and combinations of markings to describe the music listening experience.

• Visual and kinesthetic modes of response elicited the description of more differentiated musical events than the verbal response mode.

• Children in both grades used alternate modes of response to describe perceptual information.

• More fifth-graders than second-graders used kinesthetic descriptors as their primary mode of response.

• Style of thinking for all children varied per mode of response, although linearity of thinking was more readily visible in fifth-graders' responses. The kinesthetic mode of response best captured children's linear thinking patterns.

Discussion

Children's responses to music begin with concrete experience upon which more differentiated and abstract information is placed as they are

exposed to music. Their verbal, visual, and kinesthetic responses to music

listening metaphorically represent their perceptions and affective responses, their level of focused attention, and the amount of musical information that is

being absorbed and relayed in a multisensory fashion. As Pugh, Hicks, and Davis suggested, "Metaphors begin with experience, not words. Indeed, we can see, hear, touch, taste, smell, and feel metaphors without using words at



48 Kerchner

all. . . Seeking metaphors in observations and experience is our human way of

finding meaning in the world (1997, p. 157). The many revealing multisensory responses that children provided in this

study lead to the conclusion that children should have the opportunity to

express their musical perceptions and responses through multiple modes of

response and representations in the music classroom and ensemble setting.

Equally, the findings in the study support the need for diverse musical activi-

ties (composing, improvising, listening, performing, critiquing) that children

should experience as an essential process of developing of mental musical

models or schemes - unique ways of knowing music. Because children com-

pare new musical situations with prior musical experience, it would be bene- ficial for students to reflect more deeply on each musical experience they undergo. Focusing their response on only one modality would deprive the child of other means of reflection about their musical experiences.

Children should also have the opportunity to reflect on their own thinking

during and after musical experience. Teachers should encourage children of

all ages to hypothesize,speculate, compare, analyze, evaluate, create, and

re-create as they listen to music composed by themselves and others. Children

are able to become aware of their own thinking through such activity, giving them insight into and control over their musical development.

One of the most valuable features of this study has been that its design and methodology can be placed into practice in the general music classroom. Not only might children be asked to provide verbal, visual, and kinesthetic

responses to music listening examples as a part of curricular activities, but also as means of assessment. A portfolio complete with evidence of a child's music listening skill development based on verbal, visual, and kinesthetic

responses to music could be collected and assessed during his/her tenure in an

elementary school. This information could be captured on paper, audiotape, and videotape.

Based on this study's design, it seems imperative that teachers develop their interviewing and questioning skills. Asking children to tell their story about their music experiences through verbal, visual, and kinesthetic means can be quite revealing. Yet, I found that children only provided rich answers to well constructed questions. The amount of information that I received was often the reflection of the quality of the question that I posed in my spontane- ous probes during the post-interview session.

Although not a startling conclusion to this study, it warrants emphasis: Children have the capacity to be active participants during the music listening experience and are assisted in developing that capacity when provided with

tangible means of expressing their perceptions and responses.




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Children's Verbal, Visual, and Kinesthetic Responses: Insight into Their Music ListeningExperience

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