IS DIRECT EXPERIENCE ENOUGH? A STUDY OF YOUNG CHILDREN'S VIEWS OF SOUNDS

Direct or hands-on experiences are considered by many to be the essential conditions for acquiring new concepts or understandings. But are these experiences enough? In this study with 115 five and six year old children, the effect of direct experiences with sounds that vary in loudness and pitch were contrasted with the effect of adding an instructional experience in which children were involved in conversations and demonstrations about volume and pitch differences in sounds. Using a pretest-treatment-post test design, children first identified sounds that were louder or softer, higher or lower than given sounds and then made sounds that were different. Initially all students had no problem with making louder or softer sounds. Most did not distinguish pitch from volume, however. No evidence was found that children were helped to distinguish differences in pitch after opportunities to make predictions and explanations as part of direct experiences in manipulating objects or after a television-based experience with sounds. However, after instructional experiences in which children were actively involved in searching for sound patterns and participating in conversations directed toward identifying and using patterns in sounds related to differences in volume and pitch, evidence supports that such experiences were a significant contributor to the modification of their understanding of sound. Evidence supports the conclusion that direct experiences coupled with instructional conversations are essential to helping children change their concept of pitch in sounds.