Effects of age and modality on children’s perception of musical meter

When listening to music, experienced adults perceive a metrical hierarchy of stronger and weaker events. Children can tap along with the main beat of music. However, it is unclear whether children can perceive more nuanced and hierarchical aspects of musical meter, such as the greater prominence of events on the downbeat of the measure. We asked 5- to 10-year-old children to provide ratings of fit between musical excerpts and auditory or visual metronomes. Metronomes could match 1) both the beat and measure, 2) the beat but not the measure, 3) the measure but not the beat, or 4) neither the beat nor the measure. Children at all ages gave higher fit ratings to all beat-matching auditory metronomes. For visual metronomes, the same pattern was observed among older children, but younger children’s ratings did not vary across conditions. At no age did children give higher ratings to metronomes that matched the measure level, suggesting that, unlike adults, children perceive a main beat but not a hierarchy of beats. These results suggest that children’s beat perception develops earlier in the auditory modality than in the visual modality, and listeners’ sensitivity to metrical hierarchies may emerge after age 10.