Abstract:

This contribution aims to investigate the interpersonal musical perception of children’s listeners and thus to perform a pilot verification of Knobloch’s interpersonal hypothesis of music in children of younger school-age. The research involved 51 participants (N=51) aged between 6 and 9 (Mage = 7.43; SDage = 1.17), all pupils of the first level of two primary schools in Trnava and Nitra. The research design has a simple descriptive, as it is a pilot verification of the interpersonal hypothesis of music for younger school age children. The data were collected by the Test of Interpersonal Musical Perception in Children – TIMP – CH, which investigated four basic interpersonal tendencies – dominance and submissiveness, or affiliation and distance. A part of the TIHP-D was a playlist of 12 selected musical compositions of classical instrumental music, which created a stimulating perceptual material. The results indicate that the participants of the younger school-age (N=51) perceived the interpersonal charge identically (p ≤ 0.01) in each of 12 TIMP-CH compositions. Therefore, Knobloch’s interpersonal hypothesis of music can be accepted also in younger school-age, certainly with the acceptance of the developmental specific of this age period. Thus, these findings have a great potential for their use in working with children within music and aesthetic education, music philetics and music therapy, or within leisure time pedagogy (animation, etc.). The results have implications for the practice of music educators who teach music to younger school-age children. These are also important music-psychological findings for music therapists and music philetics working systematically with music perception of children.

Keywords:

Interpersonal musical perception, younger school-age, interpersonal hypothesis of music.