Music and Human Development
Music is a powerful and flexible therapeutic tool because people are responsive to it throughout their lifetime. Some activities such as reading, playing sports, driving a car, and various social activities with friends and family require a certain level of physical, intellectual, social, and emotional development to engage with. On the other hand, we can and do engage with music throughout our lives, in one form or another. How we engage may change as we get older, but it is still a part of our lives from birth to grave.
Musical and nonmusical skills emerge in different ways and times for every child, but under normal circumstances, they develop in a predictable order. There are several theories of child development, but for our purposes, we are going to focus on the theories of psychologist Jean Piaget. He outlines four primary stages of child development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operations, and formal operations. Each of these stages represents a time in normal development when the child has matured enough to perform the tasks characteristic of that developmental stage.
Development occurs through a process where the physical (and neurological) maturation interacts with the child’s environment. An environment rich in age-appropriate stimuli promotes healthy development. A lack of appropriate support, balanced with an appropriate level of self-exploration and challenges, can slow and impair healthy skill development. Piaget didn’t specifically study musical development, but other researchers, such as Dr. Edwin Gordan, have helped fill in that model. This research into musical developmental milestones has shown that musical participation contributes to the healthy continuation of mental, social, and neuro-motor development.
One of the aspects of childhood development is that complications to the developmental processes at any stage can result in physical, emotional, and social difficulties well beyond childhood. Many intellectual and emotional disorders have their origins within the earliest years of development, even before we can remember them. We may have been too young to form solid memories as we think of them, but our brains and bodies are affected, nonetheless.
In future blog posts, we will explore music’s impact during each of these developmental stages, and how it can contribute to a child’s healthy growth and resilience. We will also discuss how music therapists can help contribute to strengthening the developmental process.
Stay tuned.
