Using a Developmental-Ecological Approach to Understand the Relation Between Language and Music

Abstract

Neurocognitive and genetic approaches have made progress in understanding language-music interaction in the adult brain. Although there is broad agreement that learning processes affect how we represent, comprehend, and produce language and music, there is little understanding of the content and dynamics of the early language-music environment in the first years of life. A developmental-ecological approach sees learning and development as fundamentally embedded in a child’s environment, and thus requires researchers to move outside of the lab to understand what children are seeing, hearing, and doing in their daily lives. In this paper, after first reviewing the limitations of traditional developmental approaches to understanding language-music interaction, we describe how a developmental-ecological approach can not only inform developmental theories of language-music learning, but also address challenges inherent to neurocognitive and genetic approaches. We then make suggestions for how researchers can best use the developmental-ecological approach to understand the similarities, differences, and co-occurrences in early music and language input.

Social interaction links active musical rhythm engagement and expressive communication in autistic toddlers

“…The Music@Home and Vineland inventories are parent-report and interview measures, respectively, which may involve response bias (Wojcik et al, 2022). Yet, as parents are key social partners for their children, parents' perceptions of their children's behavior are important for continually driving parent-child social feedback loops (e.g., Warlaumont et al, 2014).…”