Teaching listening - The mechanisms of perception
The term perception tends to disappear in favor of the broader concept of "information processing" visual or auditory. We can consider listening to music as an activity of information processing sound.
1. Pipes perceptual
- The detection of a sound stimulus.
- Identification: comparison of a sound stimulus and a template stored in memory (the memory constituting a sort of lexicon within which is enriched by experiences during life). This identification is done in milliseconds.
- Discrimination: comparison between two sound events, looking for features that bring them closer or apart (actually more involved memory and vocabulary, and requires the ability to abstract and analyze these features)
- Estimation: can be of various kinds
• Assessments relating to the psychological or emotional feelings
• Objective judgments about the sound material, shape, etc.
• Normative judgments, assessments or personal reference to cultural norms
• Judgments of significance, combining music with an extra-musical content (a combination of sound mental images to visual images, literary or sentimental - eg figuralism, descriptive music)
These estimation procedures are related to the capabilities of semantic association and richness of vocabulary acquired.
These various lines overlap in perceptual active listening. However, it is essential to be aware of their increasing complexity in order to construct a pedagogical progression of hearing activity.
The development of perceptual behavior in children
• From 3 to 6 years, as capacity is developed to identify, but the perception remains global (juxtaposition of sensations, difficulty in understanding an organization, discrimination tasks difficult if not impossible).
• 6 years, listening progressively more analytical, selection and related to information, capacity building of discrimination ("same, not same").
• 7 to 15 years, development of semantic associations, capacity estimation, listening and polyphonic structure in time.
In this progressive maturation, genetic development and cultural training of the child play essential roles, the emotional aspect is inseparable from the cognitive (the musical pleasure, aesthetic emotion are intimately related to the understanding of musical language ).
Active listening in class is essential for goals ...
• To develop the capacity of immediate apprehension (increase the number of consecutive or simultaneous stimuli perceived in a time unit, a psychological present a duration of 5 seconds);
• To enrich the "internal lexicon" for easy identification;
• Develop musical memory, and discrimination capabilities;
. to build vocabulary, increase auditory references and cultural references to develop the faculties of estimation.
2. The perceptual approaches
In perception, as with any psychological function, readiness is important and determines in part how listening (passive / active, global / analytical) and reactions to what is perceived.
On both teaching and learning, it is essential to ensure that readiness, and in particular some of its components:
• Attention: it must be sought, encouraged, to avoid passive listening and suffered. An atmosphere of concentration is essential listening should not be distorted by external events (movement or speech teacher to another object that is listening, talking students).
• Motivation: it is essential. It will be more easily obtained by informing students of the educational project, traveling through space and time, and by varying the terms of listening (joint practice, a graphics, images, a theme explored in another discipline, etc..).
Pending: created can be tuned before giving instructions that limit the range of parameters to be identified, or that focus listening on a specific element to be analyzed.
3. The terms of listening
• Listen overall, for fun, for the welfare or stimulation inner feeling of physical and emotional
• Listen analytical
Hearing groups ...
The work of Gestalt psychologists (the German word Gestalt, form) showed that there are universal tendencies to proceed by grouping items, both in terms of visual perception of auditory perception.
Some examples of these groups fairly easy and immediate hearing:
• Proximity: melodic, rhythmic groups;
• Continuity: direction of movement sound, a melodic line, a phenomenon of attraction;
• Figure-ground relationship: melody superimposed on a harmonic context, stamp emerging soloist of an orchestra, punctual sounds emerging from a static frame;
• Contrast: high / low, piano / strong consonant / dissonant, etc.. ;
• Progressive construction: construction of a polyphonic texture by successive entries of a melodic pattern known (eg running away);
• Dissociation (vertical dimension).
Active listening in class should allow students to understand progressively more complex sound sources (eg, two simultaneous melodies) or detach from the sonically most easily discernible (eg the upper melody) to secure its attention to another plan (an intermediate line, or low, for example).
The articulation listen / practice also promotes the dissociation process.
Time structure (horizontal dimension) ...
Another important dimension in the apprehension hearing is to capture the temporal structure of a work as a whole: to monitor and keep track of thematic elements and their treatment, differentiate transient episodes of thematic returns, generate a construction joint. The short-term memory plays a role in this activity.