Children's Expression of Emotional Meaning in Music Through Expressive Movement

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Children's Expression of Emotional Meaning in
Music Through Expressive Movement

• R. Thomas Boone
• Assumption College
• Brandeis University
• Joseph G. Cunningham
• Brandeis University

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Abstract

• Recent research has demonstrated that preschool
  children can decode emotional meaning in
  expressive body movements however, to date, no
  research has considered preschool childrens
  ability to encode emotional meaning in gestures
  and expressive movement. The current study
  investigated 4- (N23) and 5- (N24) year-old
  childrens ability to encode the emotional
  meaning of an accompanying music segment by
  moving a teddy bear using previously modeled
  gestures and expressive movement to indicate one
  of four target emotions (happiness, sadness,
  anger, or fear). Adult judges visually
  categorized the silent videotaped gestural and
  expressive movement performances by the children
  ages with greater than chance level accuracy. In
  addition, accuracy in categorizing the emotion
  being expressed varied as a function of age of
  child and emotion. A subsequent cue analysis
  revealed that children as young as 4-years-old
  were systematically varying their gestural
  movements with respect to force, rotation, shifts
  in movement pattern, tempo, and upward movement
  in the process of emotional communication. The
  theoretical significance of such encoding ability
  is discussed with respect to childrens nonverbal
  skills and the communication of emotion.

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Introduction

• Childrens Emotional Understanding of Music
• - The intrinsic structural specification
  hypothesis argues that higher-order invariants of
  musical structure intrinsically specify some
  forms of emotional meaning in music(Clynes, 1982
  Cunningham Sterling, 1988 Scherer Oshinsky,
  1977) .
• - In a developmental process, children should be
  able to identify emotional meaning in music as
  soon as they are able to perceive these
  higher-order structural invariants (Cunningham
  Sterling, 1988).
• - Children as young as four years of age are
  capable of reliably identifying discrete
  categories of emotional meaning in music at
  levels greater than chance. (Cunningham
  Sterling, 1988 Cunningham and Leviton, 1991
  Gentile, Pick, Flom, Campos 1994).
• - Some gender differences in childrens ability
  to identify emotional meaning in music have been
  reported females have been more accurate in the
  identification of sad and fearful segments
  (Cunningham Sterling, 1988).

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• Emotional Understanding of Expressive Body
  Movements/Dance
• - Anecdotal evidence has suggested that infants
  and children respond to music through movement
  (Moog, 1976).
• - Infants movements were more lively and
  rhythmic in response to a lively and rhythmic
  segment than to a slow music segment (Trehub,
  1990).
• - Children as young as 4 years of age can
  nonverbally identify discrete emotional meaning
  in expressive body movements at above-chance
  levels and children as young as five years of
  age show an increased ability to identify such
  emotional meaning in expressive body movements
  and utilize specific body movement to make
  emotion attributions (Boone Cunnigham, 1998).

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Goals of Phase 1

• - To determine the ability of preschoolers to
  encode emotional meaning through the medium of
  expressive movement/dance.
• Hypotheses
• - Children will encode the emotional meaning of
  the music segments via their videotaped
  dance/expressive movement performances.
• - Five-year-old children will more accurately
  portray emotional meaning than will four-year-old
  children.
• - Females may more accurately portray sad and
  fearful categories of emotion than will males.

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Method

• Subjects
• Preschoolers
• - Twenty-three four year-olds (M46.7 mos) and
  twenty-four five year-olds (M59.7 mos). Both
  age groups had approximately an equal numbers of
  males and females.
• Adults
• - Sixty-six raters (M18.0 yrs), balanced for
  gender, were drawn from an introductory
  psychology class and a college-level summer
  program for high school students.
• Design
• - A 2(Age) X 2(Gender) X 3(Emotional Category)
  design was employed, with age and gender as
  between-subject factors and emotional
  categorization as a within-subjects factor.

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Stimuli

• - Twelve Music Segments, pre-rated as belonging
  to one of four emotional categories - happy, sad,
  angry, and fearful, were used.
• Four segments, one from each emotion category,
  were used as modeling segments.
• The remaining eight segments, two from each
  emotion category, were used as test segments.
• - Each segment was approximately 20 to 30 seconds
  long. Table 1 below provides the pilot
  information obtained on all 12 segments.
• - Two identical neutral-faced teddy bears were
  utilized as play partners to the preschoolers.

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Table 1

• Percentage of Interrater Agreement Among Adult
  Pilot
• Subjects for the Primary Emotion in Each Music
  Segment
• Modeling Segments
• Composition/Composer Emotion
  Percentage Agreement
• Rumanian Rhapsody, Happiness
  100
• Opus 11/Enesco
• Peer Gynt Ase's Death Sadness
  100
• Suite No. 1 Opus 46/
• Grieg
• Theme to Lifeforce/ Anger 55.9
  
• Mancini
• Surprise Attack, Fear 76.5
• The Wrath ofKhan/
• Horner

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• Test Segments
• Composition/Composer Emotion Percentage
  Agreement
• Concerto in D, Opus 35/ Sadness 100
  Tschaikovsky
• The Humorous Song/ Happiness 94.1
• Lyadov
• The Rite of Spring/ Fear 85.3
• Stravinsky
• The Red Poppy, Anger 76.5 the Russian
  Sailor's
• Dance/ Gliere
• Winter Games/ Happiness 100 Foster
• Anvil of Crom Anger 88.2
• Conan/Poledouris
• Venus/ Holst Sadness 100
• The Walls Converge, Fear 76.5 Star Wars/
  Williams

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Procedure

• Preschoolers
• - The task was structured as a game. Subjects
  were brought to a quiet area where the equipment
  was set up and told the following
• - "We are now going to play a game that involves
  music and dancing. This bear, Fuzzy," (holds up
  his/her bear) "likes to dance to music. Your
  bear, Furry, does too." (Experimenter hands the
  second bear to the subject.) "Let me show you
  how to play this game. (Turns on music.
  Experimenter starts to dance. Note the first
  four segments used for modeling were
  approximately twice as long to allow time to
  model the dance behavior.) "Can you hear that
  music? This music has feeling. Can you hear the
  feeling in the music? I can also dance with that
  same feeling. Can you see the feeling in the way
  that I'm dancing? Can you dance that way?"
  (Experimenter allows the subject dance on his or
  her own. If necessary, the experimenter
  replayed the segment until the subject shows an
  appropriate imitative behavior.)

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• - (Then as each new modeling segment is
  introduced) "Uh-oh, the music has changed. Did
  you hear that? This music has a different
  feeling. I'm going to have to change the way I'm
  dancing see how I'm dancing. I'm dancing with
  this new feeling. Can you hear that feeling in
  the music? Can you see that feeling in the way
  that I'm dancing? Can you dance that way?
• - (Then to introduce the testing task) "You know
  what? Furry wants to dance these next eight
  pieces of music with just you. Can you do that?
  Good. Listen to the music." (The subject then
  danced alone with the second bear. Between each
  segment, the experimenter prompted the child to
  dance to the segment, but no evaluative feedback
  was given. Occasionnally the experimenter would
  state that the bear was having fun. After the
  fourth testing segment, the second bear would ask
  to dance alone with the child.)

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• Adults
• - Videotapes of the preschoolers
  dancing/expressively moving the bears were
  created. Segments were remixed and shown to
  adult subjects. Each videotape segment was show
  for the duration of the musical accompaniment and
  lasted approximately 20 to 30 secs.
• - Adult subjects were used to rate the videotaped
  segments of the preschoolers dance performances.
  Adults viewed the videotaped segments in groups
  of five for a period of one hour. Approximately
  20 of the subjects watched all six videotapes
  the remaining subjects watched only a single
  taped session. ( Results showed that there were
  no differences between the subjects who watched
  all six tapes and the subjects who only watched a
  single tape.) Videotaped segments were presented
  in groups of four, all from the same subject,
  representing one of each of the four target
  emotions. Collectively, each group of four
  segments was shown without interruption, then
  repeated with 10 second pauses to allow the
  raters to evaluate each segment.

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• - Raters were asked to categorize each segment
  into one of the four emotions and rate how
  intensely the emotion was being expressed on a
  seven point Likert scale. Raters were told that
  each of the four target emotions was represented
  within each grouping of four performances.
  However, they were also informed that the
  children may not have accurately depicted the
  emotion and that they should answer freely which
  emotion they felt was being expressed within each
  distinct performance. Thus, raters were provided
  with some information to allow discriminant
  categorization, but were also free to answer with
  any emotion for a given performance.

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Results

• Accuracy Analysis
• - Accuracy was measured as a function of how
  often adult raters identified the target emotion
  in each videotaped performance. For any given
  segment, there was a total of 16 raters thus,
  the range of correct identifications for each
  segment was from 0 to 16.
• - A criterion method was used to identify which
  segments each child accurately portrayed the
  target emotion. With an expected (chance)
  frequency of correct identification by adult
  judges of 4 (25) out of 16, a total of 8 (50)
  or more judges out of 16 categorizing the
  performance as matching the target emotion yields
  a chi-square value of 5.25 with an associated
  probability of 022. Given the low statistical
  sensitivity of the chi-square statistic, such a
  criterion method is actually a more conservative
  method for assessing accuracy.
• Although judges were presented with an equal
  number of happy, sad, angry, and fearful
  performances, their responses showed a stronger
  preference for happiness (33) and sadness (28)
  than for anger (23) and fear (16). To adjust
  for this bias, these percentages were used to
  estimate the expected (chance) frequency of
  correct identification when calculating the
  adjusted chi-square criteria for each emotion.

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- Both four-year-olds (M5.35) and and 5-yr-olds
(M6.40) performed above chance (M4.0),
t(22)4.44, prespectively, depicted in Figure 1.
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The data were subjected to a 2 Child Age X 2
Child Sex X 4 Emotion Analysis of Variance with
repeated measures on the last factor which
revealed significant main effects for Age,
F(1,43)4.72, p.035, depicted in Figure 1, and
Emotion, F(3, 129)21.59, pFigure 2.
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Goals of Phase 2

• - To determine if preschool children
  systematically vary their expressive movement
  performances, changing the spatiotemporal cues of
  their movements depending upon which emotion they
  are attempting to encode.
• Hypotheses
• - Children will systematically vary the
  spatiotemporal cues of their expressive movement
  performances as a function of the target emotion
  category.
• - Five-year-old children will show more variation
  than four-year-old children in their encoding of
  the spatiotemporal cues.
• - There may be some gender differences in the
  manner in which children systematically vary
  their expressive movement performances.

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Method

• Coders
• - Ten coders assessed six targeted behavioral
  cues used by the child actors when enacting the
  expressive movement patterns to music. Each
  coder evaluated all 376 segments for the
  specified behavioral cue.
• Design
• - A 2(Age) X 2(Gender) X 3(Emotional Category)
  design was employed, with age and gender as
  between-subject factors and emotional
  categorization as a within-subjects factor.

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Results

• Cue Analysis
• - Each cue was analyzed in a separate 2(Age Group
  of Child) X 2(Sex of Child) X 4(Target Emotion
  Category) analysis of variance with repeated
  measures across all 376 expressive movement
  performances.
• - There was no main effect for Age Group of Child
  for any of the cues.
• - There were main effects for Target Emotion
  Category for Force (F(3,129)28.10, pRotation (F(3,129)7.21, pMovement Pattern (F(3,129)13.69, p(F(3,129)38.36, pcues (F(3,129)20.55, pAffect.
• - There were significantly greater amounts of
  Rotation and faster Tempo in the happy and angry
  performances than the sad and fearful
  performances.
• - There were significantly greater amounts of
  Force and Upward Movement in the happy and angry
  performances than the fearful performances. Sad
  performances had significantly lower amounts of
  Force and Upward Movement than the fearful
  performances.

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• Cue Analysis (Cont.)
• - There were significantly lower amounts of
  Shifts in Movement Pattern for the sad
  performances compared to the angry, happy, and
  fearful performances.
• - There were significant Sex of Child X Target
  Emotion Category interaction effects for Tempo
  (F(3,129)3.24, p.024) and Upward Movement
  analyses (F(3,129)4.02, p.009). While both
  boys and girls showed greater activity for the
  happy and angry performances compared to the sad
  and fearful performances, boys showed greater
  relative activity than the girls with these happy
  and angry performances.
• - A Discriminant Function Analysis yielded a
  single function which utilized the cue ratings
  from force, rotation, shifts in movement pattern,
  and tempo upward movement loaded on a third
  non-significant function. High values of this
  function predicted a group categorization of
  happiness, moderately high values predicted a
  group categorization of anger, moderately low
  values predicted a group categorization of fear,
  and very low values predicted a group
  categorization of sadness.

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Discussion

• - These findings demonstrate children as young as
  4- and 5-years-old are able to encode emotional
  meaning through expressive movement,
  approximately the same age at which they begin to
  decode emotional meaning in this and other
  nonverbal media.
• - These findings provide support for the use of
  nonverbal response formats when studying the
  early recognition of emotional meaning.
• - These findings suggest a strong intermodal
  connection between music, movement, and emotional
  meaning. These children were able to reliably
  use expressive movement to portray emotional
  meaning in music.
• - These findings suggest that a more thorough
  investigation of childrens ability to use such
  cues to decode and encode emotional meaning
  across all nonverbal media is warranted.
• - Aside from some minor differences, there was no
  evidence of a dramatic gender difference in the
  ability to encode emotional meaning via
  expressive body movement.

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References

• Boone, R. T., Cunningham, J. G. (1998).
  Childrens decoding of emotion in expressive body
  movement The development of cue attunement.
  Developmental Psychology, 34, 1007-1016.
• Clynes, M. (ed.). (1982). Music, mind, and
  brain The neurospscyhology of music. New York,
  NY Plenum.
• Cunningham, J.G., Sterling, R.S. (1988).
  Developmental change in the understanding of
  affective meaning in music. Motivation and
  Emotion, 12, 399-413.
• Cunningham, J.G., and Leviton, J.M. (1991).
  Preschoolers' understanding of emotional meaning
  in music. Poster presented at the meetings of
  the Society for Research in Child Development,
  Seattle, WA.

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• Gentile, D. A., Pick, A. D., Flom, R. A.,
  Campos, J. J. (1994). Adults and preschoolers
  perception of emotional meaning in music. Poster
  presented at 13th Biennial Conference on Human
  Development, Pittsburgh, PA.
• Moog, H. (1976). The development of musical
  experience in children of preschool age.
  Psychology of Music, 4, 38 - 45.
• Scherer, K. R., Oshinsky, J. S. (1977). Cue
  utilization in emotion attribution from auditory
  stimulus. Motivation and Emotion, 1, 331 - 346.
• Trehub, S. (1990). Infant Movement Responses to
  Music. Poster presented at the International
  Conference on Infant Studies, Montreal.