Investigating heart rate and rhythm changes in an infant’s music education course: A case study

Abstract

Music research focusing on infants shows that there are functional specializations for music processing in the human brain, and that, for infants and toddlers, music education starting at an early stage is important in their development. However, research has not yet provided solid evidence on what developmental (biopsychological) potential the educational 'tools' used in these kind of settings may carry, considering that these settings or educational practices constantly vary. This study focuses on the musical elements of tempo (rhythmical pace) and beat (sound impulse), and investigates the way these are handled by an educator in a formally structured early years (0-2) music education course of seven episodes. The study also examines how two different age groups of participants biologically perceive the specific aforementioned rhythmical elements. In contradiction to relevant communication theories and the hypothesis followed in this study, results show no significant differences in the way the specific educator handles rhythm for the two groups, following a similarly increasing trajectory of rhythmical development for each session per group. Additionally, there were no significant differences in the way the infants physiologically reacted to the above rhythmical handling, presenting an overall increasing heart rate trajectory.

Music and neuroscience research for mental health, cognition, and development: Ways forward

“…For instance, music has been implicated in contexts of emotional, social, cultural, and biological influence (Peretz, 2006 ; Koelsch, 2018 ; Savage, 2019 ; Savage et al, 2020 ). Developmental neuroscience has studied the processing and perception of music in the fetal and infant brain and its selective role in environmental enrichment and socioemotional development (Papatzikis and Papatziki, 2016 ; Chorna et al, 2019 ; Arrasmith, 2020 ; Papatzikis et al, 2021 ). Mental health research suggests the potential benefits of music in alleviating symptoms in a variety of neurological and affective disorders ranging from depression and schizophrenia to dementia (Van de Winckel et al, 2004 ; Talwar et al, 2006 ; Lin et al, 2011 ; Gustavson et al, 2021 ).…”

An Infant's Question on COVID-19 and Music: Should I Attend My Online Classes?

“…Following the secondary and tertiary music education example into turning online (for e.g., see Calderón-Garrido and Gustems-Carnicer, 2021) many already established early-years music education programs tried to successfully accommodate parents/caregivers, "students" and specialist music educator-facilitators in this new online context by devising and offering relevant sessions. The mission and aims of these online sessions were to keep promoting development and further brain stimulation for children whose age ranges between a few months and 5 years (Gruhn, 2005); to propose early forms of sound and rhythm perception (Papatzikis and Papatziki, 2016) among other musical qualities; to offer pre-lexical or early speech communication platforms (Bolduc, 2009;Walton, 2014), but most of all to support and facilitate social interactions, development and bonding (Hallam and Council, 2015). These have always been the goals of early music programs but for the first time they were taking place in a synchronous-sometimes asynchronous too-online educational context approached mostly as "emergency remote" rather than "online" teaching (Hodges et al, 2020).…”