for the Cognitive ScIencesof MusIc Developing concepts of musical style

This paper describes three studies which investigate age changes in different aspects of listeners ' responses to musical styles. In the first study, 105 children between the ages of 8 and 14 years were asked make "odd one out" discriminations amongst triads of classical and popular excerpts drawn from four stylistic groups in each case. There were no consistent age differences, and there was a much higher proportion of correct identifications of the target excerpts for the popular than for the classical styles. The second study investigated stylistic knowledge in 196 participants between the agesof 8 and 80 yearsby asking them to list what they considered to be 8 prominent styles of music. Participants made finer distinctions amongst the specific styles with which they were likely to be familiar as a result of their particular age cohort. In the third study 275 participants between the ages of 9 and 78 years were asked to name as many styles as they could within each of three genres (classical, jazz, and pop/rock), and to rate how much they liked these nominated styles. The total number of style