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Music Listening, Age Effects on
Age is an important consideration when discussing music listening because it is one of only two demographic characteristics that consistently predict audio exposure. Researchers who examine overall media use by children and adolescents have identified a distinct change in behavior at approximately 8 years old. This entry thus focuses on two developmental periods—children (ages 1 to 7) and older children and adolescents (ages 8 to 18).
Young Children (Ages 1 to 7)
The developmental stage of the young child dictates much of the music listening experience. Infants as young as 5 months show signs of recognizing and learning rhythmic patterns and sequential relationships between sounds. Recognition of pitch develops later. However, those reactions are most likely responses to changes in the aural environment as the infants differentiate the music from other nonmusical sounds like speech. Such discriminating listening is further refined to the point where preschoolers increasingly connect musical sounds with emotions, such as associating major mode to happiness and minor mode to sadness.
Research suggests that children begin to develop musical taste around the age of 5. That is, they exhibit greater reactions to the rhythmic and tonal characteristics of music. By the age of 5, children favor harmonious over dissonant, tonal over atonal, and metrical over nonmetrical music. However, as they grow, the disparity in their reactions to the extremes (e.g., tonal versus atonal) increases such that 10-year-olds are much more accepting of music that is harmonious, tonal, and metrical. The changes in taste observed in children between ages 4 and 10 are commonly attributed to the combination of acculturation and psychological development during this period. Of course, parental involvement is a prime source of acculturation. More than half of parents of young children report singing or playing music for them each day. However, the frequency of music play decreases for toddlers and for second children as compared to first children.
Children between the ages of 2 and 7 listen to music about 45 minutes per day. At this age, the research suggests they spend a little more time with radio than other sources. Children are four times more likely to listen to children's music and programming than Christian, classical, Top 40, or country and western music genres, each of which is heard by about 10% of children. By the age of 6, children are focusing more attention on popular music and start recognizing and forming opinions about the hit songs of the day. The interest in popular music grows steadily, and their openness to music decreases as they reach adolescence.
Older Children and Adolescents (Ages 8 to 18)
Development and Exposure
Music is frequently cited as the most important media for adolescents due in part to their physiological and psychological development. Around the age of 8, children begin developing a greater sense of independence, and they enter a period of transition away from parental guidance toward self-determination. This transition is accompanied by changes in adolescents' media exposure. Researchers have observed an increase in audio use between the ages of 8 and 18 while other media use (e.g., television) declines, particularly during the mid-teen years. Between the ages of 13 and 18, the typical adolescent spends more than 10,000 hours listening to music. On any given day, 85% of U.S. children between 8 and 18 years old listen to at least a few minutes of audio media (primarily music), and more than 40% of those children spend more than an hour and a half listening each day. Most adolescents are spending that time with popular music.
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