The effect of musical activities on children’s social emotional development (SED)
Teena Sim, Univeriti Putra Malaysia
INTRODUCTION
Story About a Shy Boy;
One little shy boy came into my music class 2 years ago, avoided eye contact when I greeted him and his mother, stayed close to his mother and refused to participate in most of the activities throughout the class even though his eyes glowed with enthusiasm when the instruments were given out. This was not the first time that I had shy child like him before, and knowing that he needed more time to adapt to the environment before he could join any of the activities, I kept myself a few steps away from him when conducting the class. At the end of the class, all the other children’s singing and dancing moved him; he joined in the circle although without holding others’ hands.
This scenario continued for a couple of months with him getting a little closer to me each time. He started to give me a hug after class on the third month that showed his comfort and security in the class. I was very excited about his building confidence but the mother looked very worried and insisted he had learnt nothing if he was not participating.
On the sixth month, I finally decided to invite him to come in the class without his mother as all the other children were in the class without adult company. I was extremely happy when he joined in the group and danced cheerfully and played his favorite instrument alone while I sang.
The above mentioned scenario lead to one question that reflecting the need of initiating this research was: what does musical activities bring to a child’s social emotional development?
Author met children from different backgrounds and with distinct characters that were referred as different temperaments in this study and witness the effect of musical activities on each individual.
Children of different temperaments respond to musical activities in a varied way and receive different level of impact on social emotional development. For example, a positive and easy child greets friends with smiles and participates in most activities enthusiastically and progresses smoothly towards expected goals whereas a negative, moody and difficult child will either totally withdraw themselves in the beginning or behave aggressively and show his /her progress in an uncertain manner. It might take different quantity of duration for the child learning to adjust their emotional state through musical activities participation. However participating in musical activities seems able to facilitate a child to a comfortable level of intensity in order to be productively engaged in their surroundings. Musical activities therefore predicted as an effective tool to enhance children social emotional development in this study.
Research Hypothesis
Author presents a concept of the relationships among musical activities, temperament and social emotional development. It is proposed that a consistent, well planned musical activities may bring a positive effect on children’s social emotional development regardless of their unique temperament.
To examine the relationships between the variables, the following null hypotheses were formed:
Ho 1 There is no significant difference between the pre and post score of social emotional development (SED).
Ho 2 There is no significant difference between the improvement levels in social emotional development by temperament.
Framework
Social emotional development is like any other perspective of development. Like cognitive or physical development, it is a learning path; it is the way a child learns how to interpret his/her surroundings and learn how to develop his/her abilities of emotional expression, understanding and regulation. With his/her distinctive nature (Temperament), his/her distinctive way of interactive exploring, and equal weight of the environmental role (through well plan musical activities), he/her then become a distinctive adult; prosaically or antisocially (Figure 1.1).
Independent Variable / Intervention / Dependent VariableTemperament / Musical / Social Emotional
Activities / Development
Figure 1.1 Framework of the study
In this study, musical activities in a group is assumed to be an effective media for helping children to increase their ability in understanding, regulation and expressing their social emotion even it might have a different degree of effect on children with different temperament.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Humans are a very social & expressive species. Social emotions play a critical part in our daily life, they even override our most basic needs; fear can forestall our appetite, anxiety can lead to a student’s poor performance in an examination, anger can cause a person to hurt others, and joy can cause one to be more generous (Berk, 2005).
During the early childhood, social emotional development sets the stage for exploration and later readiness to learn and indeed, is the foundation for all development (Jerald, Cohen & Stark, 2000, Bagdi 2005).
Researches support that music is a wonderful art form that encompasses all areas of child development, namely emotional, intellectual, physical, moral, and aesthetics in a delightful and enjoyable way. In a study of the extra musical effects of music lessons on preschoolers, Devries (2004) concluded that six themes addressed the extra musical effect of music lessons: 1) involvement in music activities allowed children to release energy; 2) engagement in music-movement activities developed motor skills in children; 3) a variety of music activities promoted opportunities for student socialization; 4) music activities provided opportunities for children to express themselves; 5) music contributed to sociodramatic play; and 6) music listening activities focused children's listening skills.
Music provides an opportunity for children to participate on a social level through group activities. This helped the development of prosocial skills and improves self-esteem (Doise, Mugny, & Perret-Clermont, 1975; Johnson & Johnson, 1989; Light & Glachan, 1985; Roazzi & Bryant, 1998, Davidson, 2003). Involving in musical activities will increase children’s social emotional sensitivity (Weinberger, 2001).
However children are born with each unique behavior style. Beginning in 1956, Thomas and Chess collected enormous amounts of data on childrearing practices and behaviors among 138 middle-class white children and 95 lower-socioeconomic-class Puerto Rican children, from infancy to 7 or 8 years of age. Analysis yielded nine categories of "behavioral style": (1) general activity level, (2) regularity and predictability of basic functions, like hunger, sleep, and elimination, (3) initial reaction to unfamiliarity, especially approach and withdrawal, (4) ease of adaptation to new situations (obviously correlated with the third category), (5) responsiveness to subtle stimulus events, (6) amount of energy associated with activity, (7) dominant mood, primary whether happy or irritably, (8) distractibility, and (9) attention span and persistence.
Several studies have shown that individual differences in temperament qualities, such as activity level or approach/withdrawal, may be related to children's social functioning and adjustment within the peer group, the responses they make to their peers and the quality of their relationships with other children (Farver & Branstetter, 1994; Keogh & Burstein, 1988; Mobley & Pullis, 1991; Stocker & Dunn, 1990). In general, children with easy temperaments, defined as approachful, adaptive and positive in mood (Thomas & Chess, 1977) have been found to respond prosocially to peer distress (Farver & Branstetter, 1994), and are rated as behaviorally adjusted to the preschool environment in terms of cooperation and persistence (Mobley & Pullis, 1991). In contrast, children with difficult temperaments appear to have relationships that are more problematic with their peers and are more likely to exhibit socialization and behavioral problems (Kym Irving, 2001).
Musical activities are of the utmost importance when present as a mediator, catalyst, moderator, and enhancer in a child’s development holistically. However, there is no research on how musical activities affect children’s social emotional development of different types of temperaments. This might be because musical activities were used by psychologist for behavior disorder or special children in a therapeutic effect or by early childhood music educators in upgrading children’s musicality or lastly might be missed by author’s searching.
METHOLOGY
Study Design
This research was a naturalistic observational study conducted (1) in the homes by the parents to assess the child’s temperament and (2) in the music classroom by the researcher to assess the child’s social emotional development.
Subjects were recruited through convenience sampling where all the children who attended the on going music class (from 5 months to 40 months of participation history) weekly in two music centers (Kajang and Sunway) conducted by the researcher.
Location of study
The research was carried out in Bandar Sunway, and Kajang that comprises of huge housing estates which is multiracial and predominantly occupied by middle-income family.
Sampling
A sample size of 42 preschool children that represented a cohort of preschool children from the age of 5-6 years old (14 boys, 28 girls; 22 five years, 20 six years old as illustrated in Table 1) participated for the study. 74% were Chinese, 19% were Indian, and 7% were Malay. Most children have siblings: 45% has two, 33% has three, 10% has four and 10% was a single child and 2 % from a big family of seven, most children i.e. 64% were first child, and second child occupied 26%. All the children had at least two months old of musical activities exposure before the observation started.
Table 1: Composition of the subjects and background information (n=42)
N / %Gender / Boy / 14 / 33.3%
Girl / 28 / 66.7%
Age / 5 / 22 / 52.4%
6 / 20 / 47.6%
Race / Chinese / 30 / 73.8%
Others / 11 / 26.2%
No of siblings / 1 / 4 / 9.5%
2 / 19 / 45.2%
3 / 13 / 33.3%
4 / 4 / 9.5%
7 / 1 / 2.5%
Birth of order / 1 / 26 / 64.3%
2 / 11 / 26.2%
Others / 4 / 9.5%
Stay with / Yes / 18 / 42.9%
Grandparents / No / 24 / 57.1%
As all subjects are recruited through convenient sample, therefore the number of each temperament type was uneven as depicted in Figure 1.
Figure 1 Distribution of subjects by age, gender and temperament
Procedure
A briefing on the purpose and the details of the study was given to the parents. At the end of the briefing, the Carey Temperament Scale was distributed to the parents. The Carey Temperament Scale was in three languages (English, Chinese and Bahasa Malaysia). Parents were given a choice of selecting the version they were most competent in.
Once the Carey Temperament was distributed to the parents, a one-month’s observation of the children’s behavior during the one-hour weekly music class (as described in intervention program, ) i.e. a total of 4 to 5 hours observation of the child’s behavior when participating in the musical activities was conducted before the researcher filled in the first Social Emotional Developmental Checklist (pre-test).
The second Social Emotional Developmental Checklist was filled six months later after another month of observation on children’s behavior in participating the musical activities.
Instruments
Two forms of instruments used in this study, consisted of questionnaires (set A and B) and intervention programs (type I and II).
SET A: Child Social Emotional Development
This measure comprised of 60 items, which incorporated children’s emotional regulation and maturity, social skills and awareness as well as their prosocial versus aggressive tendencies. The internal reliability for social emotional development was 0.929 (pre) and 0.893 (post) for Petaling Jaya and Kajang (West Malaysia) and 0.83 for Sarawak, East Malaysia (Abdullah & Teena, 2005).
The items in the checklist were rated 0 to 2, where 0 was never, 1 was sometimes and 2 was almost always. The Range of possible score was ranging from 0 to 120.
There are 31 items accounted for positive social emotional development (known as PSED) that were subdivided into 3 categories as emotional positivity, emotional understanding and interpersonal relationship. Another 29 items accounted for negative social emotional development known as NSED) which were subdivided into 2 categories as external emotional problem and internal emotional problem. The cutoff score of PSED is 24 or greater to take as an indication for social emotional maturation at age 5 and 6 and a total score of 23 or greater for NSED is taken as an indication of risk in psychosocial impairment. However, the scores of NSED were recoded into positive value for overall impression on children’s social emotional development (known as SED) where the cutoff score is 48 or greater to show an indication of the achievement in social emotional developmental milestone for children of age 5 to 6.
SET B: The Carey Temperament Scale
The Carey Temperament Scales was used to gauge parents’ perception of their children’s behavioral style by using a 6 points Likert scale from 1 was almost never, 2 was rarely, 3 was variable, usually does not, 4 was variable usually does, 5 was frequently and 6 was almost always.
The Carey Scales comprised one hundred questions on each child’s activity level, rhythmicity, approachability, adaptability, intensity in a response, mood, persistence, distractibility, threshold and ten question of general impression of child’s temperament from the parents.
This questionnaire attached a cover page to obtain a clearer picture on each child’s family background and minimum growing environment. The internal reliability for appraisal of parents’ perception of child’s behavioral style was 0.864 for Petaling Jaya and Kajang (West Malaysia) and 0.909 for Sarawak, East Malaysia (Abdullah & Teena, 2005).
For study purposes, the children’s temperament was assigned to three constellations; (1) difficult, (2) slow-to-warm-up (recognized as STWU), and (3) easy (Sean, 2002).
Intervention Programs
The music class was conducted in a group of five to ten children. There are six groups (four from Type I and two from Type II) with a mixture of children in age four to five, five to six, and six to seven at two different musical programs, which were:
· Type I (Music & Movement with Percussion Instrument), and
· Type II (Children Musician Course with Keyboard)
The contents of the musical activities in Type I and II program were in six subjects that combined listening, singing, moving, instruments playing, dancing and reading in a delightful musical way. Classroom environment and material in both musical programs were child-centered and the teacher was well equipped with understanding of Early Childhood Development and Temperament. The 2 musical programs were different in approach; Type I, was focusing on all aspects of a child development, such as helping children develop body control (physical), encouraging play, imagination and creativity, encouraging language (cognitive) and communication which laid a foundation for positive self-esteem, disciplining to encourage emotion regulation, morality, and a sense of conscience (social emotion) through musical activities. Type II, on the other hand, concentrated mostly in children’s musical ability development.