Joint Drumming in Brazilian and German Preschool Children

Abstract

As a core feature of musical rituals around the world, humans synchronize their movements to the pulse of a shared acoustic pattern-a behavior called rhythmic entrainment. The purpose of the present study was (a) to examine the development of rhythmic entrainment with a focus on the role of experience and (b) to follow one line of evidence concerning its adaptive function. We hypothesized (a) that children learn how to synchronize movements to sound during social interactions, where they experience this behavior as a convention of the surrounding culture's practice, and (b) that rhythmic entrainment has an adaptive value by allowing several people to coordinate their actions, thereby creating group cohesion and ultimately promoting cooperativeness. We compared the spontaneous synchronization behavior of Brazilian and German preschool children during joint drumming with an experimenter, either vis-à-vis or separated by a curtain, versus drumming along a playback beat. Afterward, we measured the children's prosocial tendencies toward the experimenter. We found that Brazilian children were more likely than German children to spontaneously synchronize their drumming in a social setting, even if the codrummer was hidden from view. According to hypothesis, the variation in individual synchronization accuracy between and within the two samples could be partly explained by differences in individual experience with active musical practice, as revealed by parental interviews. However, we found no differences in children's prosocial tendencies depending on whether they just had drummed alone or together with the experimenter.

Prosocial Consequences of Interpersonal Synchrony

“…The need to investigate potential moderators has been emphasized by recent failed replications (Kirschner & Ilari, 2013; Schachner & Mehr, 2015). In this meta-analysis, we examined the following potential moderators.…”

“…However, no quantitative review to date has integrated the scattered experiments on the social consequences of interpersonal synchrony. Furthermore, little is known about the variables that moderate interpersonal synchrony’s potential effects on social outcomes – a fact that appears to be particularly relevant in light of failed replications (Kirschner & Ilari, 2013; Schachner & Mehr, 2015). …”

Music in the early years: Pathways into the social world

“…That is, at least two elements that enable rhythmic entrainment (i.e., perception and production of body movements to perceived rhythmic and metric structures) are already present in early life (Phillips-Silver, Aktipis, & Bryant, 2010). The other two elements, namely, the integration of perception and production and the adjustment of body movements to perceived beats and metric structures (see Phillips-Silver et al, 2010), take some time to develop (for a discussion see Kirschner & Ilari, 2014). Furthermore, there are substantial individual differences in children's rhythmic entrainment abilities, as the latter are influenced by formal music education (Drake, Jones, & Baruch, 2000), culture (Kirschner & Ilari, 2014), and social context (Eerola et al 2006;Kirschner & Tomasello, 2009).…”

Dynamics of Simultaneous and Imitative Bodily Coordination in Trust and Distrust

“…Some studies have also demonstrated that coordinated movements strengthen several pro-social behaviors. For example, episodes of coordinated activity enhance helpfulness in infants (Cirelli et al, 2014a,b, 2016) and children (Kirschner and Tomasello, 2010; Kirschner and Ilari, 2014; Endedijk et al, 2015). Similar results have been reported for adults.…”