Don’t Just Listen! The Social Benefits of Active Music-Making for Children
I’m a professor, but I’m also a parent. So, the long months of the pandemic have found me spending every Thursday teaching nine children from Pre-K to 2nd grade in my home, with my spouse as my fearless co-teacher. We are both lifelong musicians – the guitar-toting, songwriting, traveling kind – and when we started our remote school co-op with four other families, we knew music would be a big part of our day. What we didn’t realize was that it would become so central to so many aspects of our teaching approach. We began by sourcing a handful of affordable ukuleles, adding a few extra tambourines to our bucket of percussion instruments, and off we went. At first, we scheduled dedicated music time around math and reading and science, but we quickly discovered that no subject was beyond the reach of our voices, our guitars, our bodies, and the children’s rapidly evolving rhyming capabilities! We have found ourselves co-creating silly songs about snails and trees, exploring the physics of sound using electric guitars and banjos, and practicing greetings in Spanish over two chords on the ukulele. Music has come to infuse almost everything we do with these kids, but here’s the key: they have to be actively making the music – not just listening. Singing, swaying, marching, making up words, beating a drum – these are all examples of what researchers call “active music-making.” And more and more research is confirming that using active music-making with young children in a group setting offers unique social benefits.
As a social scientist, I am interested in how making music with other people can help bring us together. A 2010 study conducted with preschool-age children showed that when kids participated in active music-making that involved singing and dancing together, they exhibited increased helping and cooperation with peers when compared to a group in a control condition without musical elements. I recently published a study extending this work to unfamiliar adults; preschool-age children who participated in a singing and movement activity were more helpful and willing to share with a new adult than children in a non-musical condition. Why would that be? Well, the children in the musical condition in our study spent more of their time looking at their partners. They also made more attempts to move together, and moving together in synchrony has been shown to increase sharing and cooperation in preschool-age children. Dr. Miriam Lense and Dr. Stephen Camarata from Vanderbilt University have proposed that active music-making offers a convergence of qualities that make it ideal for encouraging social interaction. It requires shared attention between participants, it is predictable, and it is easily and naturally integrated into play for many young children. Because it is fun for most kids, it is also naturally reinforcing. Dr. Lense and I recently collaborated on a study showing preliminary results of a parent-child music class involving children with and without Autism Spectrum Disorder, and many participating parents emphasized that making music with their child over the course of the program strengthened their parent-child bond outside of the class. A picture begins to emerge: actively engaging with music through singing and movement connects us to one another.
So, the question becomes, how can we – as a community of scholars and storytellers creating content for preschool and elementary school children – make use of this information in meaningful ways? First, preschool and early elementary content with musical elements should be intentional about eliciting active musical engagement from children during and after viewing. One way to do this is to build on familiar and accessible melodies and rhythms; Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood has done this brilliantly, recycling melodies while tying lyrics to everyday contexts in which children can sing the tunes themselves. Research suggests that engaging deeply with music requires children to allocate their limited attention and processing ability to unfamiliar elements; thus, using familiar tunes and varying only the lyrics is a worthy approach if lyrical content is significant. Interactive apps with embedded recording features like OK Play offer a great blueprint for eliciting joint music-making from parents and children. Content creators can also incorporate opportunities for musical improvisation, a special category of active music-making. Children’s efforts at musical improvisation may sound messy to skilled adult musicians, but emerging work shows that musical improvisation may help consolidate memory following a learning activity. The take-home message is that even though active music-making may look like pure entertainment, there is measurable benefit to kids and families singing and moving together.
Actionable Insights
Don’t underestimate the value of musical segments in preschool and elementary children’s media! Musical bits that are memorable and relevant to children’s lives can be important building blocks for social interaction outside of viewing time.
When creating musical segments, consider using melodies repeatedly and pairing with new lyrical content, particularly if the lyrical content is intended to teach something.
Consider ways to elicit active musical engagement from the viewer both during and after viewing. Gross motor movements that are easy to follow – or even sign language elements – can engage children physically with the music-making experience.
Sara Beck, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Psychology at Randolph College
Collaborator of The Center for Scholars and Storytellers
Additional References: