Music helps young children recognize emotions from an early age

Music is a powerful tool for passing the mood, regardless of whether it is heard through a live performance or a movie, which makes it an effective medium to understand how people identify and react to emotions. Studies have shown that children aged 5 to 11 show growing accuracy in recognizing specific emotions in music.

However, research on recognizing emotions in music among people with features related to the “soulless” behavior-as long as the lack of empathy, guilt or an open expression of feelings-humiliates. This is important because children higher in these features are more vulnerable to aggression, breaking principles and psychopathological behavior.

Scientists from the Psychology Department at Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences studied how well 144 children from Philadelphia aged 3 to 5 of recognized happiness, sadness, peace or fear in 5-second music clips.

It turned out that children can identify emotions with the level of accuracy better than accidental supposition, and performance improves with age. In addition, they discover that children whose parents gain them higher in soulless features, show worse recognition of emotions in music, but it was more difficult to recognize terrifying music. Their findings are published in.

“We show that children are good in matching the faces of emotions to” the correct “music of emotions, even at the age of 3,” says Professor Rebecca Waller, co -reliable author with former post -training learning, Rista C. Plate, “which emphasizes how important music can be, especially in the socialization of emotions and teaching social skills and for children who can learn to express their emotions to express their emotions. verbally. “

This is the first studying study whether children with higher soulless features have difficulty recognizing music, says Waller. Yael Paz, a doctorate employee in Eden Lab and a co -existing author of Sydey Sun, a Penn student at the time of these research, says that one of the most interesting findings are differences in recognizing emotions compared to the expression of the face.

Waller notes that the previous work of her laboratory and others show that children with higher soulless and emotional features have more difficulties with recognizing suffering from facial expression. Therefore, the authors hypothesized that children with higher soulless and emotional features would have difficulty recognizing terrifying music.

Paz says that scientists were surprised when higher children in these traits were equally good in recognizing fear, which suggests that music can be extremely suitable for recognizing emotions. He considers music as an alternative entrance port for children who are struggling with understanding people’s emotions through facial expression or other visual tips.

This study was conducted in a community sample of children with a low general level of soulless features, and the authors notice that in the future direction of research it replicates their work among children directed from a clinic who sees children higher in soulless and absent features. Waller says that another interesting question is what factors, like genetics or experience, differences in children’s abilities to identify emotions in music.

“We are glad that we can continue to use music as a paradigm both to understand the mechanisms at the base and the goals of treatment,” he says. “Music can be very suggestive, which can bring special benefits to this subgroup of children.”