Music and emotion
[7][page needed] When it comes to understanding how emotion can affect children, a lot of the information we have available to us today comes from Piaget's Theory and Stages of Cognitive Development.
Segmental features are the individual sounds or tones that make up the music; this includes acoustic structures such as duration, amplitude, and pitch.
Research has shown that suprasegmental structures such as tonal space, specifically dissonance, create unpleasant negative emotions in participants.
The emotional responses were measured with physiological assessments, such as skin conductance and electromyographic signals (EMG), while participants listened to musical excerpts.
Studies on young children and isolated cultures show innate associations for features are similar to a human voice (e.g. low and slow is sad, faster and high is happy).
[22][23] Although that may still remain a nature vs. nurture debate, seeing as how many nursery rhymes are slow, sad sounding (some with what some could describe as disturbing lyrics, such as in "Rock-a-bye Baby"[24]), and in a minor key, yet have the ability to soothe young children.
The interior frontal gyrus, substantia nigra, cerebellum, and insula were all identified to have a stronger correlation with nostalgic music than not.
As stated in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, "People with personality disorders (PDs) are often difficult to reach emotionally in therapy.
As music therapy (MT) provides an entry point to emotions and facilitates contact and communication, it is regularly used with this target group.
Past research has argued that opposing emotions like happiness and sadness fall on a bipolar scale, where both cannot be felt at the same time.
[31] Studies indicate that the ability to understand emotional messages in music starts early, and improves throughout child development.
[33][34][35] Studies have shown that children are able to assign specific emotions to pieces of music; however, there is debate regarding the age at which this ability begins.
"[38] These studies have shown that children at the age of 4 are able to begin to distinguish between emotions found in musical excerpts in ways that are similar to adults.
[35][39] However, singing about feelings helps babies and toddlers learn the words to describe their emotional experiences (“If you’re happy and you know it…”).
One recent study found that babies as young as 5 months old are able, under some conditions, to discriminate between happy and sad musical excerpts (Flom, Gentile, & Pick 2008).
[9] Pre-school and elementary-age children listened to twelve short melodies, each in either major or minor mode, and were instructed to choose between four pictures of faces: happy, contented, sad, and angry.
Empirical research has shown how listeners can absorb the piece's expression as their own emotion, as well as invoke a unique response based on their personal experiences.
[49] Because music is such a pervasive part of social life, present in weddings, funerals and religious ceremonies, it brings back emotional memories that are often already associated with it.
[32] Examples of this can be seen in young children's spontaneous outbursts into motion upon hearing music, or exuberant expressions shown at concerts.
The framework also explains the idea that emotional responses to music are formed in an adaptive way to accommodate or assimilate a wide range of cues arising from psychophysical, cultural, and personal variables interacting with situational contexts.
It also enriches the traditional dichotomy between universal and cultural influences on emotional understanding, taking into consideration fluid interactions over time that are dependent on knowledge, experience, and available cues within a situational context.
[12] However, newer studies have found that music has the capability of affecting the major reaction components of emotion, "including subjective feeling, physiological arousal (autonomic and endocrine changes), motoric expression of emotion (such as smiling) and action tendencies (for example, dancing, singing, playing an instrument, foot tapping and clapping, even if only covertly).
[60] Elicited and conveyed emotion in music is usually understood from three types of evidence: self-report, physiological responses, and expressive behavior.
In fact, a meta-analysis of 41 studies on music performance found that happiness, sadness, tenderness, threat, and anger were identified above chance by listeners.
[12] As a result, the validity of the self-report method is often questioned, and consequently researchers are reluctant to draw definitive conclusions solely from these reports.
[12] Other research identifies outward physical responses such as shivering or goose bumps to be caused by changes in harmony, while tears and a lump-in-the-throat sensation are provoked by changes in melody.
Music can have a positive, immediate impact on our mental state; fast tempos can psychologically and physiologically arouse us, helping energize us for the day.
[64] Based on these inconsistent findings, there is much research left to be done in order to determine how conveyed and elicited emotions are similar and different.
[68] Music therapy may also be a viable option for people experiencing extended stays in a hospital due to illness.
[citation needed] Music therapy has also shown great promise in individuals with autism, serving as an emotional outlet for these patients.
