Sad syntax? Tonal closure Affects Children's Perception of Emotional Valence

TL;DR

This study investigates how children perceive emotional valence in music based on tonal closure, finding that tonal expectations influence their emotional judgments regardless of age or musical features.

Contribution

It demonstrates that children's perception of musical emotion is affected by tonal closure independently of other musical dimensions, highlighting early cognitive processing of tonality.

Findings

Tonal closure significantly influences children's emotional perception.

No interaction between tonal effects and age, instrument, or pitch height.

Children associate higher tonal closure with positive emotions.

Abstract

Western music is largely governed by tonality, a quasi syntactic system regulating musical continuity and closure. Converging measures have established the psychological reality of tonality as a cognitive schema raising distinct expectancy for both adults and children. However, while tonal expectations were associated with emotion in adults, little is known about the tonality emotional effects in children. Here we examine whether children associate levels of tonal closure with emotional valence, whether such associations are age dependent, and how they interact with other musical dimensions. 52 children, aged 7, 11, listened to chord progressions implying closure followed by a probe tone. Probes could realize closure (tonic note), violate it mildly (unstable diatonic note) or extremely (out of key note). Three timbres (piano, guitar, woodwinds) and three pitch heights were used for each closure level. Stimuli were described to participants as exchanges between two children (chords, probe). Participants chose one of two emojis, suggesting positive or negative emotions, as representing the 2nd child response. A significant effect of tonal closure was found, with no interactions with age, instrument, or pitch height. Results suggest that tonality, a non referential cognitive schema, affects children perception of emotion in music early, robustly and independently of basic musical dimensions.