The relationship between the assessment of musical abilities and indicators of regulatory functions of children attending music classes

Abstract

Introduction. The purpose of this work was to study the consistency of musical scores abilities of children as teachers with the development of their regulatory functions. In addition, within the framework research, an initial testing of the questionnaire was carried out to assess musical methods children. The novelty of the study lies, firstly, in the development and use a new tool for assessing the musical abilities of children, based on the concept B. M. Teplov’s position, and secondly, in demonstrating that not only music lessons influence on indicators of the development of children's regulatory functions, but also some of the regulatory functions also contribute to children's musical ability. Methods. The study involved 61 children, aged 5-6 years, who have additional lessons several times a week music in children's art schools in Moscow and Krasnodar. During diagnosis with children several meetings were held in which such indicators of regulatory functions like cognitive flexibility, working memory and inhibition. In assessing the level of development of their musical abilities were attended by 50 teachers who filled out specially developed questionnaire to identify the level of development of the following parameters of musical abilities of children: Pitch hearing, sense of rhythm, modal sense and emotional responsiveness. Results. The result was a positive relationship between visual working memory and the assessment of pitch hearing in children involved in music. In addition, as a result of the regression analysis, it was shown that the indicator of visual working memory of children contributes to the assessment of such parameters of musical abilities such as pitch hearing (R2 = 0.241, p = 0.008) and emotional responsiveness (R2 = 0.149, p = 0.043). The discussion of the results. Thus, the study demonstrates the relationship of musical abilities and regulatory functions of children, and the contribution regulatory functions in assessing the musical abilities of children, which justifies the value systematic music lessons in preschool age.