Comparisons of Incipient Music Responses Among Very Young Twins and Singletons

Abstract

IN SEPTEMBER, 1960, the lilorida State University Institute of Human Development began a multi-disciplinary longitudinal research designed to study intensively not less than twenty pairs of preschool-age twins and an equal number of non-twins matched by age and sex in a laboratory situation. The research project described herein was affiliated with the twin study of the Institute of Human Development. R. L. Witherspoon, director of the Institute, was the principal investigator of the twin study. Irvin Cooper was the directing professor of this study, which received financial support from the Florida State University Research Council. A renew of the literature reveals that sensitivity to music is present in very young children, but there appears to have been no significant attempt to determine when musical responses Erst emerge, or the nature of these early responses. Studies which have dealt with the rhythmic development or singing development of very young children have rarely indicated in music symbols musical patterns which emerge either spontaneously or by imitation. Finally, there has been msufficient research to establiih any norms as to the number of infants or young children who possess a measurable sensitivity to music, or the degree of sensitivity to music found among this age group. Nowhere in the literature did the writer find evidence that mvestigation of music responses among tuins of any age has taken place; furthermore, a team of graduate students working with the Florida State University Institute of EIuman Development in 1961 compiled a bibliography of 94 twin studies, none of which dealt speciIScally with music responses among twins of any age. The present study was undertaken in order to determine (a) the approximate age at which responses to music become apparent in twins and singletons; (b) the percentage of twins and singletons of this study whoX by age two years, exhibit a measurable degree of response to music; (c) the approximate degree of music response present in twins and singletons of this study; (d) the types of music stimuli which evoke the greatest responses from the twins and singletons; (e) the influence of growth and experience during the duration of this study; and (f) the nature of overt primitive musical expressions, either spontaneous or evoked, of twins and singletons. The study also sought to test the following general hypotheses: (a) that l;here is no significant diSerence in the degree of response to music of twins of different ses during infancy a$ld early childhood; (b) that there is no significant difference in the frequency or degree of response between paired twins and their corresponding singleton controls; (c) that there is no significant difference in the errocative power of specific music stimuli; (d) that there is no significant difference in response scores of various observation periods;