How we taught the deaf to sing

Abstract

In order to investigate how far deaf children can control the pitch of their voice optically, we made them practise to sing by means of a tonoscope. Apparatus: Tonoscope, built after the principle of Seashore's tonoscope. When spoken before the tonoscope, the voice is transmitted through the microphone and amplifier to the neon-lamp and makes one of the eight dotted circles drawn on the disc appear to stop. Two innermost circles are for regulating the rotation of the disc. Each of the other eight circles corresponds to the tone do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si and do' respectively. (See Fig. 1 in the Japanese text p. 162) Subjects: Two boys and two girls, aged 14, of the Tokyo Municipal Deaf-School. Two of them are partial-deaf with some residue of hearing. (See Fig. 2 in the Japanese text p. 163) Results: After the practice for about a month, they have learned to sing the musical scale, the national hymn “Kimigayo” and easy melodies of child songs. As a result of this practice, they became to be able to easily articulate the sentence as well as the word with accent. These children could not articulate the accent before the practice, because the marked feature of the accent in the Japanese language is the rise and fall of the pitch, which was unknowable to the deaf. Moreover, such practice made their voice much louder, more stabilized (the pitch of the deaf's voice, especially of the complete-deaf, is usually very unstable, fluctuating from time to time). © 1938, The Japanese Psychological Association. All rights reserved.