Task-based Variability in Children's Singing Accuracy Bryan E. Nichols Chair of the Supervisory Committee:Professor Steven M. Demorest School of MusicThe purpose of this study was to explore task-based variability in children's singing accuracy performance. The research questions were:1. Does children's singing accuracy vary based on the nature of the singing assessment employed?2. Is there a hierarchy of difficulty and discrimination ability among singing assessment tasks?3. What is the interrelationship among different tasks and how few tasks might be employed in a comprehensive measure of accurate singing?A 2 X 4 factorial design was used to examine the performance of 4 th grade children (n = 120) in both solo and doubled response conditions. Every child sang four task types:solo pitch, interval, pattern, and the song Jingle Bells. To account for the effect of tonal memory, test items in all tasks were presented in four total pitches by an adult female vocal model. Each task type contained five items, and the fifth item replicated the first to provide a measure of stability. Scoring was done by the researcher and one other judge with high reliability. Pitch matching was scored dichotomously and song singing was scored using an eight-point scale. Data were transformed to a 0-1 scale to express difficulty and discrimination indices. !The results indicated that there was significant task-based variability in children's singing accuracy. Difficulty levels varied by task type, with patterns and songs indicating lower performance than single pitches and intervals. Performance was significantly higher for all tasks in the doubled condition than in the solo condition, and a significant interaction indicated task-based performance varied by response mode.Students who indicated a history of private lessons (n = 54) evidenced significantly higher performance than those without. !An exploratory factor analysis demonstrated that all tasks load onto one factor.Internal reliability was satisfactory, and the results suggest that a minimum of three items can be included in each task in future research for a reliability coefficient of .75, or a minimum of four items for a coefficient greater than .80. These singing tasks were significantly inter-correlated, and the easiest item was also lowest in range. Vocal scooping and its implications for singing accuracy assessment were discussed. !The three main findings were that doubled singing was more accurate than solo singing, summative assessment should include as many task types as is feasible, and within-and between-student performance should be compared using the same task type. Future research should explore variables affecting differing variability between lower-and higher-performing singers. Additionally, there is a relationship between history of private lessons and singing accuracy, and motivation and general musical experience should be explored as mediating or moderating variables so that teachers can best encourage student development. Last, it remains possible ...

The purpose of this study was to test the effect of daily singing instruction on the singing accuracy of young children and whether accuracy differed across four singing tasks. In a pretest-posttest design over seven months we compared the singing accuracy of kindergarteners in a school receiving daily singing instruction from a music specialist to a control school receiving no curricular music instruction. All children completed four singing tasks at the beginning and end of the study: matching single pitches, matching intervals, matching short patterns, and singing a familiar song from memory. We found that both groups showed improvement on the pitch-matching tasks from pretest to posttest, but the experimental group demonstrated significantly more improvement. Performance on the familiar song task did not improve for either group. Students achieved the highest accuracy scores when matching intervals. Regular singing instruction seems to accelerate the development of accurate singing for young children, but the improvement was evident only in the pitch-matching tasks. It is possible that singing skill development proceeds from pitch-matching to the more difficult task of singing a song from memory. If so, this has implications for how we structure singing instruction in the early grades.

The purpose of this review of literature was to identify research findings for designing assessments in singing accuracy. The aim was to specify the test construction variables that directly affect test performance to guide future design in singing accuracy assessment for research and classroom uses. Three pitch-matching tasks-single pitch, interval pitch, and patterns-plus song-singing have each been shown to be discriminators of singing accuracy. Teachers and researchers should consider incorporating more than one task type when assessing children, since performance on one song or pitch-matching task cannot easily be generalized to others. Item-level and task-level difficulty must be taken into consideration when designing singing tests. In addition to task type, the variables of singing voice development, contextual presentation, model characteristics, range, and text must be a part of a priori decision making.

Jazz musicians rely on different skills than do classical musicians for successful performances. We investigated the working memory span of classical and jazz student musicians on musical and nonmusical working memory tasks. College-aged musicians completed the Bucknell Auditory Imagery Scale, followed by verbal working memory tests and musical working memory tests that included visual and auditory presentation modes and written or played recall. Participants were asked to recall the last word (or pitch) from each task after a distraction task, by writing, speaking, or playing the pitch on the piano. Jazz musicians recalled more pitches that were presented in auditory versions and recalled on the piano compared with classical musicians. Scores were positively correlated to years of jazz-playing experience. We conclude that type of training should be considered in studies of musical expertise, and that tests of musicians' cognitive skills should include domain-specific components.

We examined the relationship between interval identification skill and error detection skill in preservice teachers, accounting for timbral differences by including piano and vocal stimuli. The interval identification test was comprised of 33 items spanning from C2 to B5. Fifteen error detection items were monophonic melodies, two measures long, in 4/4 meter, and included one pitch error. Music education majors ( N = 50) completed both tests in vocal and piano timbres during one individual study session. Interval identification performance was significantly correlated with error detection performance, r = .75. Additionally, interval identification score was a significant predictor for error detection when also accounting for variance from numbers of semesters of enrollment and theory/aural skills courses. Response times for correct responses of interval identification were faster than for incorrect responses. We found no main effects or interactions between primary performance area and timbre of test item. The results suggest interval identification skill generally can be used to predict error detection, reinforcing the importance of developing interval identification as a basic musical skill.