TY - GEN
T1 - The meaning of tonality within a mother-infant interaction: Tonal synchrony as a way to promote shared engagement.
AU - Van Puyvelde, Martine
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - The meaning of tonality within a mother-infant interaction: Tonal synchrony as a way to promote shared engagement. Infant Directed Speech (ID Speech) is considered as an important factor in the temporal synchronisation between mothers and infants. Although ID Speech is described for many years as communicative musicality, a profound musical analysis has not been done yet. Moreover, ID Speech has mostly been observed separated from the vocalisations of the infant. In recent research (Van Puyvelde et al., 2010) we introduced an enlarged perspective on the early synchronization processes between mothers and infants, based on tonal analyses of vocal interactions between 15 mothers and their 3-month-old infants during five minutes of free play in a laboratory setting. Almost 84% of the 558 analysed vocal exchanges contained tonal aspects based on harmonic series (71,06%) or pentatonic series (28,94%) with a strong preference for the consonant simple frequency ratios. These tonal interaction periods (TIPs) were often intertwined by pitch/interval matches. The temporal architecture of a TIP showed a remarkable correspondence with Stern's (2004) 'present moment' which is often associated with aspects of communicative musicality within a mother-infant relationship, but also with music, poetry, dance... In sequel research (Van Puyvelde et al., submitted) the possible meaning of tonal synchrony was investigated in function of an intersubjective creation between mother and infant. The results suggest that periods of tonality and non-tonality within vocal interactions are related with the degree of shared engagement between both partners and thus might embody signals of relaxation and tension on a pre-reflective level which can be mutually exchanged. Almost 90% of the TIPs promoted a positive climate within the dyad resulting in a very fast increase of shared engagement (M = .32s, SD = .67), versus 38% of the non-tonal interaction periods (nTIPs). Frequent use of this promoting mechanism was related with significant less negative engagement of the infant (r = -.627, p
AB - The meaning of tonality within a mother-infant interaction: Tonal synchrony as a way to promote shared engagement. Infant Directed Speech (ID Speech) is considered as an important factor in the temporal synchronisation between mothers and infants. Although ID Speech is described for many years as communicative musicality, a profound musical analysis has not been done yet. Moreover, ID Speech has mostly been observed separated from the vocalisations of the infant. In recent research (Van Puyvelde et al., 2010) we introduced an enlarged perspective on the early synchronization processes between mothers and infants, based on tonal analyses of vocal interactions between 15 mothers and their 3-month-old infants during five minutes of free play in a laboratory setting. Almost 84% of the 558 analysed vocal exchanges contained tonal aspects based on harmonic series (71,06%) or pentatonic series (28,94%) with a strong preference for the consonant simple frequency ratios. These tonal interaction periods (TIPs) were often intertwined by pitch/interval matches. The temporal architecture of a TIP showed a remarkable correspondence with Stern's (2004) 'present moment' which is often associated with aspects of communicative musicality within a mother-infant relationship, but also with music, poetry, dance... In sequel research (Van Puyvelde et al., submitted) the possible meaning of tonal synchrony was investigated in function of an intersubjective creation between mother and infant. The results suggest that periods of tonality and non-tonality within vocal interactions are related with the degree of shared engagement between both partners and thus might embody signals of relaxation and tension on a pre-reflective level which can be mutually exchanged. Almost 90% of the TIPs promoted a positive climate within the dyad resulting in a very fast increase of shared engagement (M = .32s, SD = .67), versus 38% of the non-tonal interaction periods (nTIPs). Frequent use of this promoting mechanism was related with significant less negative engagement of the infant (r = -.627, p
KW - mother infant vocalisations
KW - harmonic series
KW - pentatonic series
KW - shared engagement
KW - tonality and consonance
M3 - Conference contribution
BT - Cambridge University
ER -