A study investigating the comparative effects of an audiation pause in tonal pattern training on fourth and fifth grade children

The purpose of this study is to examine variations of response time in tonal pattern training. The problem of the study is twofold. 1) To determine the comparative effect of fourth and fifth grade students who echoed tonal patterns immediately and students who echoed after a pause, and 2) to examine how the variations in response time in tonal pattern training effects the performance of high and low aptitude students. The sample for this study consisted of approximately 140 fourth and fifth grade students who attended an elementary school located in a Southern New Jersey suburban community. The sample included six intact classes, each class randomly assigned to the treatment group and the control group. All six classes received music instruction once a week for 40 minutes from the investigator. The Intermediate Measures of Music Audiation (IMMA) was administered to all students during regularly scheduled music classes prior to the beginning of the tonal pattern instruction to determine each student\u27s level of musical aptitude. During the ten weeks of instruction, the subjects participated in tonal pattern training during their regularly scheduled music class singing tonic and dominant tonal patterns in major and minor, first at the aural/oral level and then at the verbal association level. At the end of the period, students were tested individually on their singing achievement of tonal patterns. Within two weeks of the completion of the tonal training, students were tape-recorded singing familiar and unfamiliar tonal patterns on the neutral syllable bum in major and minor. Two judges were trained to evaluate the student performances using a criterion-referenced tonal rating scale. The interjudge reliability between judges was calculated at .915. No statistically significant differences were found for either the interaction or main effect for the treatment. As expected, however, a main effect for aptitude was confirmed through statistical analysis. Based on the evidence acquired from this study, it cannot be concluded that variations of response time in tonal pattern training is a necessary component for learning theory pedagogy