Individual Differences in Music Listening Responses of Kindergarten Children

In this project, we examined a phenomenon observed in two previous studies: When children were given the opportunity to listen to four pieces of music for as long as they chose in individual listening sessions, large differences were apparent among different children s total listening times. However, individual children tended to be remarkably consistent within their own approach to listening to the pieces, listening to each of the four for very similar lengths of time. The present study was designed to replicate and extend aspects of those studies with older children, and to examine how listening times would relate to teachers' ratings of the children's attention during large- and small-group activities. Results indicated that the kindergarten participants' listening times were consistent with the previous responses of preschool-age children. Additionally, time spent listening bore no relationship to either teacher ratings of attention or to age.