The effect of musical activities on children’s social emotional development (SED)
Teena Sim, Univeriti Putra Malaysia
INTRODUCTION
Story About a Shy Boy;
One little shy boy came into my music class 2 years ago, avoided eye contact when I
greeted him and his mother, stayed close to his mother and refused to participate in most
of the activities throughout the class even though his eyes glowed with enthusiasm when
the instruments were given out. This was not the first time that I had shy child like him
before, and knowing that he needed more time to adapt to the environment before he
could join any of the activities, I kept myself a few steps away from him when
conducting the class. At the end of the class, all the other children’s singing and dancing
moved him; he joined in the circle although without holding others’ hands.
This scenario continued for a couple of months with him getting a little closer to me each
time. He started to give me a hug after class on the third month that showed his comfort
and security in the class. I was very excited about his building confidence but the mother
looked very worried and insisted he had learnt nothing if he was not participating.
On the sixth month, I finally decided to invite him to come in the class without his
mother as all the other children were in the class without adult company. I was extremely
happy when he joined in the group and danced cheerfully and played his favorite
instrument alone while I sang.
The above mentioned scenario lead to one question that reflecting the need of initiating
this research was: what does musical activities bring to a child’s social emotional
development?
Author met children from different backgrounds and with distinct characters that were
referred as different temperaments in this study and witness the effect of musical
activities on each individual.
Children of different temperaments respond to musical activities in a varied way and
receive different level of impact on social emotional development. For example, a
positive and easy child greets friends with smiles and participates in most activities
enthusiastically and progresses smoothly towards expected goals whereas a negative,
moody and difficult child will either totally withdraw themselves in the beginning or
behave aggressively and show his /her progress in an uncertain manner. It might take
different quantity of duration for the child learning to adjust their emotional state through
musical activities participation. However participating in musical activities seems able to
facilitate a child to a comfortable level of intensity in order to be productively engaged in
their surroundings. Musical activities therefore predicted as an effective tool to enhance
children social emotional development in this study.
Research Hypothesis
Author presents a concept of the relationships among musical activities, temperament and
social emotional development. It is proposed that a consistent, well planned musical
activities may bring a positive effect on children’s social emotional development
regardless of their unique temperament.
To examine the relationships between the variables, the following null hypotheses were
formed:
Ho 1
There is no significant difference between the pre and post score of social
emotional development (SED).
Ho 2
There is no significant difference between the improvement levels in social
emotional development by temperament.
Framework
Social emotional development is like any other perspective of development. Like
cognitive or physical development, it is a learning path; it is the way a child learns how to
interpret his/her surroundings and learn how to develop his/her abilities of emotional
expression, understanding and regulation. With his/her distinctive nature (Temperament),
his/her distinctive way of interactive exploring, and equal weight of the environmental
role (through well plan musical activities), he/her then become a distinctive adult;
prosaically or antisocially (Figure 1.1).
Independent
Intervention
Dependent Variable
Musical
Social Emotional
Activities
Development
Variable
Temperament
Figure 1.1 Framework of the study
In this study, musical activities in a group is assumed to be an effective media for helping
children to increase their ability in understanding, regulation and expressing their social
emotion even it might have a different degree of effect on children with different
temperament.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Humans are a very social & expressive species. Social emotions play a critical part in our
daily life, they even override our most basic needs; fear can forestall our appetite, anxiety
can lead to a student’s poor performance in an examination, anger can cause a person to
hurt others, and joy can cause one to be more generous (Berk, 2005).
During the early childhood, social emotional development sets the stage for exploration
and later readiness to learn and indeed, is the foundation for all development (Jerald,
Cohen & Stark, 2000, Bagdi 2005).
Researches support that music is a wonderful art form that encompasses all areas of child
development, namely emotional, intellectual, physical, moral, and aesthetics in a
delightful and enjoyable way. In a study of the extra musical effects of music lessons on
preschoolers, Devries (2004) concluded that six themes addressed the extra musical effect
of music lessons: 1) involvement in music activities allowed children to release energy;
2) engagement in music-movement activities developed motor skills in children; 3) a
variety of music activities promoted opportunities for student socialization; 4) music
activities provided opportunities for children to express themselves; 5) music contributed
to sociodramatic play; and 6) music listening activities focused children's listening skills.
Music provides an opportunity for children to participate on a social level through group
activities. This helped the development of prosocial skills and improves self-esteem
(Doise, Mugny, & Perret-Clermont, 1975; Johnson & Johnson, 1989; Light & Glachan,
1985; Roazzi & Bryant, 1998, Davidson, 2003). Involving in musical activities will
increase children’s social emotional sensitivity (Weinberger, 2001).
However children are born with each unique behavior style. Beginning in 1956, Thomas
and Chess collected enormous amounts of data on childrearing practices and behaviors
among 138 middle-class white children and 95 lower-socioeconomic-class Puerto Rican
children, from infancy to 7 or 8 years of age. Analysis yielded nine categories of
"behavioral style": (1) general activity level, (2) regularity and predictability of basic
functions, like hunger, sleep, and elimination, (3) initial reaction to unfamiliarity,
especially approach and withdrawal, (4) ease of adaptation to new situations (obviously
correlated with the third category), (5) responsiveness to subtle stimulus events, (6)
amount of energy associated with activity, (7) dominant mood, primary whether happy or
irritably, (8) distractibility, and (9) attention span and persistence.
Several studies have shown that individual differences in temperament qualities, such as
activity level or approach/withdrawal, may be related to children's social functioning and
adjustment within the peer group, the responses they make to their peers and the quality
of their relationships with other children (Farver & Branstetter, 1994; Keogh & Burstein,
1988; Mobley & Pullis, 1991; Stocker & Dunn, 1990). In general, children with easy
temperaments, defined as approachful, adaptive and positive in mood (Thomas & Chess,
1977) have been found to respond prosocially to peer distress (Farver & Branstetter,
1994), and are rated as behaviorally adjusted to the preschool environment in terms of
cooperation and persistence (Mobley & Pullis, 1991). In contrast, children with difficult
temperaments appear to have relationships that are more problematic with their peers and
are more likely to exhibit socialization and behavioral problems (Kym Irving, 2001).
Musical activities are of the utmost importance when present as a mediator, catalyst,
moderator, and enhancer in a child’s development holistically. However, there is no
research on how musical activities affect children’s social emotional development of
different types of temperaments. This might be because musical activities were used by
psychologist for behavior disorder or special children in a therapeutic effect or by early
childhood music educators in upgrading children’s musicality or lastly might be missed
by author’s searching.
METHOLOGY
Study Design
This research was a naturalistic observational study conducted (1) in the homes by the
parents to assess the child’s temperament and (2) in the music classroom by the
researcher to assess the child’s social emotional development.
Subjects were recruited through convenience sampling where all the children who
attended the on going music class (from 5 months to 40 months of participation history)
weekly in two music centers (Kajang and Sunway) conducted by the researcher.
Location of study
The research was carried out in Bandar Sunway, and Kajang that comprises of huge
housing estates which is multiracial and predominantly occupied by middle-income
family.
Sampling
A sample size of 42 preschool children that represented a cohort of preschool children
from the age of 5-6 years old (14 boys, 28 girls; 22 five years, 20 six years old as
illustrated in Table 1) participated for the study. 74% were Chinese, 19% were Indian,
and 7% were Malay. Most children have siblings: 45% has two, 33% has three, 10% has
four and 10% was a single child and 2 % from a big family of seven, most children i.e.
64% were first child, and second child occupied 26%. All the children had at least two
months old of musical activities exposure before the observation started.
Table 1: Composition of the subjects and background information (n=42)
Gender
Boy
Girl
N
14
28
%
33.3%
66.7%
Age
5
6
22
20
52.4%
47.6%
Race
Chinese
Others
30
11
73.8%
26.2%
No of siblings
1
2
3
4
7
4
19
13
4
1
9.5%
45.2%
33.3%
9.5%
2.5%
Birth of order
1
26
64.3%
Stay with
Grandparents
2
Others
11
4
26.2%
9.5%
Yes
No
18
24
42.9%
57.1%
As all subjects are recruited through convenient sample, therefore the number of each
temperament type was uneven as depicted in Figure 1.
10
Temperament
Difficult
Slow To Warm Up
6
9
4
5
2
3
1
1
Age Group
0
Easy
6 Years Old
Count
8
1
10
5 Years Old
Count
8
6
4
2
4
3
4
5
4
2
0
boy
girl
Child's Gender
Figure 1 Distribution of subjects by age, gender and temperament
Procedure
A briefing on the purpose and the details of the study was given to the parents. At the end
of the briefing, the Carey Temperament Scale was distributed to the parents. The Carey
Temperament Scale was in three languages (English, Chinese and Bahasa Malaysia).
Parents were given a choice of selecting the version they were most competent in.
Once the Carey Temperament was distributed to the parents, a one-month’s observation
of the children’s behavior during the one-hour weekly music class (as described in
intervention program, ) i.e. a total of 4 to 5 hours observation of the child’s behavior
when participating in the musical activities was conducted before the researcher filled in
the first Social Emotional Developmental Checklist (pre-test).
The second Social Emotional Developmental Checklist was filled six months later after
another month of observation on children’s behavior in participating the musical
activities.
Instruments
Two forms of instruments used in this study, consisted of questionnaires (set A and B)
and intervention programs (type I and II).
SET A: Child Social Emotional Development
This measure comprised of 60 items, which incorporated children’s emotional regulation
and maturity, social skills and awareness as well as their prosocial versus aggressive
tendencies. The internal reliability for social emotional development was 0.929 (pre) and
0.893 (post) for Petaling Jaya and Kajang (West Malaysia) and 0.83 for Sarawak, East
Malaysia (Abdullah & Teena, 2005).
The items in the checklist were rated 0 to 2, where 0 was never, 1 was sometimes and 2
was almost always. The Range of possible score was ranging from 0 to 120.
There are 31 items accounted for positive social emotional development (known as
PSED) that were subdivided into 3 categories as emotional positivity, emotional
understanding and interpersonal relationship. Another 29 items accounted for negative
social emotional development known as NSED) which were subdivided into 2 categories
as external emotional problem and internal emotional problem. The cutoff score of PSED
is 24 or greater to take as an indication for social emotional maturation at age 5 and 6 and
a total score of 23 or greater for NSED is taken as an indication of risk in psychosocial
impairment. However, the scores of NSED were recoded into positive value for overall
impression on children’s social emotional development (known as SED) where the cutoff
score is 48 or greater to show an indication of the achievement in social emotional
developmental milestone for children of age 5 to 6.
SET B: The Carey Temperament Scale
The Carey Temperament Scales was used to gauge parents’ perception of their children’s
behavioral style by using a 6 points Likert scale from 1 was almost never, 2 was rarely, 3
was variable, usually does not, 4 was variable usually does, 5 was frequently and 6 was
almost always.
The Carey Scales comprised one hundred questions on each child’s activity level,
rhythmicity, approachability, adaptability, intensity in a response, mood, persistence,
distractibility, threshold and ten question of general impression of child’s temperament
from the parents.
This questionnaire attached a cover page to obtain a clearer picture on each child’s family
background and minimum growing environment. The internal reliability for appraisal of
parents’ perception of child’s behavioral style was 0.864 for Petaling Jaya and Kajang
(West Malaysia) and 0.909 for Sarawak, East Malaysia (Abdullah & Teena, 2005).
For study purposes, the children’s temperament was assigned to three constellations; (1)
difficult, (2) slow-to-warm-up (recognized as STWU), and (3) easy (Sean, 2002).
Intervention Programs
The music class was conducted in a group of five to ten children. There are six groups
(four from Type I and two from Type II) with a mixture of children in age four to five,
five to six, and six to seven at two different musical programs, which were:

Type I (Music & Movement with Percussion Instrument), and

Type II (Children Musician Course with Keyboard)
The contents of the musical activities in Type I and II program were in six subjects that
combined listening, singing, moving, instruments playing, dancing and reading in a
delightful musical way. Classroom environment and material in both musical programs
were child-centered and the teacher was well equipped with understanding of Early
Childhood Development and Temperament. The 2 musical programs were different in
approach; Type I, was focusing on all aspects of a child development, such as helping
children develop body control (physical), encouraging play, imagination and creativity,
encouraging language (cognitive) and communication which laid a foundation for
positive self-esteem, disciplining to encourage emotion regulation, morality, and a sense
of conscience (social emotion) through musical activities. Type II, on the other hand,
concentrated mostly in children’s musical ability development.
Analysis and Discussion
Improvement of subjects’ social emotional development
Paired Samples t-test reveals that there was a significant difference of percentage in
improvement of Social emotional development between pre and posttest (t=-13.81, p <
.05). Table 2 showed that the pretest of subjects’ SED (n=80.82,) improved significantly
(posttest: n=102.31,) after 6 months of musical activities’ participation. It also showed a
closer gap of the score from pretest (SD=15.03) to posttest (SD=9.67) which persisted
that subjects of wider range of SED level improved in varied pace and reached a closer
SED level.
The result seems to support findings of research by which showed that active music
making brought about better-adjusted social behaviors (Boswell, 1985 and Stanley, 1996)
and encouraged positive social emotional development (Forrai, 1997, Berman, 2003).
Table 2: Paired Samples Statistic of pre and post SED (n=39)
Pair 1
Pre Social
Emotional
Development
Post Social
Emotional
Development
Mean
Std.
Deviation
t –score
Sig. (2tailed)
80.82
15.026-
-13.814
.000
102.31
9.669
Improvement level of subjects’ social emotional development by different temperament
All subjects from either temperament constellations showed significant improvement in
SED after six months of musical activities’ participation as in Figure 2 and Table 3.
Difficult
105.00
Slow-To-Warm-Up
Easy
100.00
Mean
95.00
90.00
85.00
80.00
75.00
Pre score of SED
Post score of SED
Pre and post test of SED
Figure 2: The pre and post score of SED by temperament
Table 3 Mean of Pre and Post SED by three temperaments
N
Temperament
Difficult
Mean
Std
Deviation
Min ~Max
12
Pre
76.7
Post
101.8
Pre
17.8
Post
9.7
Pre
48~108
Post
85~118
STWU
11
83
100
12.2
11.4
40~102
78~115
Easy
19
101.8
103.9
12.23
8.9
62~110
82~116
Figure 3a showed that difficult category improved the most at 21%, followed by easy
category improved 17% and STWU improved 16%.
Mean Percentage in Improvement of SED
25.00
20.00
15.00
10.00
21
16
17
5.00
0.00
Difficult
Slow To Warm Up
Easy
Temperament
Figure 3a: The mean percentage in improvement of SED by Temperament
In Figure 3b, it showed that through musical activities in group, all subjects with three
temperament constellations improved the most in intrapersonal relationship.
Percentage in Improvement
of Emotional Positivity
25.00
Percentage in Improvement
of Emotional Understanding
Percentage in Improvement
of Intrapersonal Relationship
Percentage in Improvement
of External Emotional
Problem
20.00
Percentage in Improvement
of internal Emotional Problem
Mean
15.00
24
23 22
22
20
10.00
19
19
17
16
16
16
14
12
12
12
5.00
0.00
Difficult
Slow To Warm Up
Easy
Temperament
Figure 3b: The mean percentage in improvement of SED (5 components) by
Temperament
According to Figure 4, among 3 temperamental types, difficult type had generally
improved more in both age and gender difference, nevertheless, 5 years old boys of slowto-warm-up improved the most at 24% followed by both 5 and 6 years old boys of
difficult category at 23%. Both 5 and 6 years old girls of slow-to-warm-up had the least
improvement at 11%. For comparison purposes, the groups’ improvements were ranked
as in Table 4.
Mean Percentage i...
17
0.00
25.00
20.00
15.00
23
18
5.00
17
Age Group
10.00
5 Years Old
11
5.00
6 Years Old
22
Child's Gender
10.00
Child's Gender
Mean Percentage i...
15.00
boy
0.00
25.00
20.00
15.00
10.00
5.00
girl
Mean Percentage i...
20.00
girl
17
11
16
0.00
25.00
20.00
15.00
10.00
23
24
Difficult
Slow To Warm Up
20
boy
Mean Percentage i...
25.00
5.00
0.00
Easy
Temperament
Figure 4. The comparisons of SED improvement in the percentages by Age, Gender and
temperament
The reasons why difficult temperament, 5 years old girls and boys improved more than
the other was assumed that musical activities worked well to improve their SED since
they have more rooms to be improved.
To summarize the above result, this study asserted that with musical activities’
participation, all categories of children gained the benefits of improvement in their social
emotional development especially the 5 years old boys of STWU temperament who had
shown the most significant improvement. Based on the temperamental categorizing of
Carey Temperament Scales, the definition of STWU in this study is children who are
inactive, withdrawing, non-adaptable, with mild intensity, and negative mood. By using
musical activities as a medium, the joyous, conducive atmosphere and appealing
“leadership” of the easy children and an understanding teacher, the group may simply
attract those inactive and withdrawing children to participate. Some withdrawing children
may not join in the first few classes, but with consistent exposure and witnessing the
scene of other children enjoying the activities, the withdrawing children will eventually
join in the group and open themselves to the others, though different case might take
different period of time to initiate the first move. This is true especially when it come to
the different gender where boys will be attracted more easily to participate than the girls
that explained the above result. Due to the temperamental characteristic, this group of
subjects somehow shows a general small degree of improvement after 6 months of
musical activities’ participation.
Table 4 Ranking of the improvement in SED
Improvement
Age
No
Gender
Temperament
24%
5
3
Boys
STWU
23%
5&6
4
Boys
Difficult
22%
6
3
Girls
Difficult
20%
5
4
Boys
Easy
18%
6
1
Boys
STWU
17%
5
4
Girls
Difficult
6
10
Boys & Girls
Easy
16%
5
5
Girls
Easy
11%
5&6
7
Girls
STWU
Children in difficult temperament in this study were categorized as children with
arrhythmic, withdrawing, non-adaptable, negative mood but respond with intensive
emotion. They could not express themselves well and understand others precisely, could
be violent to the others, behaved uncooperative and moody. Musical activities helped
these children to out pour their expression through movement and instrument playing and
sooth them through singing or holding hands with others in circle games. According to
the result, no extreme difference was shown between the improvement of boys and girls
as basically they are both active so it is easier to invite them to the participation, but most
significant improvement was found among these groups of subjects.
Children in easy temperament are rhythmic, approaching, adaptable, mild intensity and
positive mood that always been responding positively. There is no significant difference
among the easy temperament of different age and gender was shown in the result implied
the fact that easy temperament children participated and enjoy group activities easily and
improved almost in the same rate.
However, Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance revealed that there was no significant
difference in the improvement of SED between the three constellations of temperament
(Table 5). This finding does not support results of previous studies that indicated that
there were differences in the social emotional responses of children of different
temperament. This study assumed that other factor like the type of music program,
duration of musical activities’ participation might account for bringing the subjects grow
to the similar social emotional level.
Table 5 Repeated Measures ANOVA between the differences of pre and post score of
subjects’ SED by temperament (n=39)
Type III
Sum of
Source
Mean
Squares
Df
Square
F
Sig.
Within-Subjects Contrasts
factor1
factor1 * Temperament
Error(factor1)
8460.748
1
8460.748
181.676
.000
116.328
2
58.164
1.249
.299
1676.543
36
46.571
Between-Subjects Contrasts
Intercept
606634.26
5
Temperament
Error
1 606634.265
257.727
2
128.863
10081.453
36
280.040
2166.23
9
.460
.000
.635
CONCLUSION
The present observation examined how much consistent weekly musical activities can
improve the social emotional development of 5 and 6 years old young children with
different temperament.
Two hypotheses were formed to examine the different levels of improvement in subjects’
social emotional development by temperament. The conclusions were drawn as follow;
Ho 1
There is no significant difference between the pre and post score of children’s
social emotional development.
Reject the null hypothesis. There was a significant difference between pre and post score
of children’s social emotional development (t =-13.8, p < 0.05). The result seems to
support findings of research by which showed that active music making brought about
better-adjusted social behaviors (Boswell, 1985 and Stanley, 1996) and encouraged
positive social emotional development (Forrai, 1997, Berman, 2003).
Ho 2
There is no significant difference between the improvement levels of social
emotional development by temperament.
Failed to reject the null hypothesis. There was no significant relationship between child’s
temperaments with social emotional development. With an appropriate approach and
intervention; such as Scaffolding, as well as Goodness of fit seemed to play a major role
in improving subject’s social emotional development.
The findings to data provide solid support for the claim that participating in consistent
weekly musical activities improves 5 and 6 years old young children’s social emotional
development regardless of their temperament constellation. The improvement varied
from 3.3% to 36.7% (mean=17.9, Std. Deviation=8.1) and none of the tested components
(emotional
understanding—18.9%,
emotional
positivity—16.1%,
interpersonal
relationship—22.2%, external emotional problem—14.5% and internal emotional
problem—15.8%) had shown no improvement after at least six months of musical
activities’ participation. In short, well planned musical activities with focusing on
children’s all facets of development is effective when used as a medium to help improve the
subjects’ learning in musicality and as well as the social emotional development.
IMPLICATION
This study showed subjects learn to understand emotion, learn to respond positively and
mostly, learn to cooperate with less aggressive and withdrawal behaviors during
participating the musical activities. Music is a medium; teacher sang in a happy tone,
subjects cheered, teacher sang sorrowfully, subjects frowned. During the musical
activities, subjects cultivated habit of treating peers and instruments in respect, learnt to
know how to achieve full enjoyment only by working cooperatively with peers, learnt to
manage feeling like anger or fear, learnt to resolve conflicts when fighting for the same
instrument, handling stress by music movement, learnt when and how to lead and follow,
learnt to differentiate good and bad behavior. Moreover subjects with aggressive
tendency learnt to interact with peers in an acceptable way and subjects who were
withdrawal nurtured to accept new friends. The emotional foundation at this stage is the
readiness for subjects to challenge an even bigger circle—school.
In reviewing the beliefs of this study, children’s social emotional development is
assumed to be the most important facet; with a healthy social emotional development,
children are motivated to explore and ready to learn. On the other hand, music is assumed
to be the most appropriate medium in all children activities; it catches children’s attention
easily, it pacifies children effectively, it enhances children’s learning joyfully. Therefore
well-planned musical activities equipped with teachers in positive attitude and warm
personality should be implied to all preschools and daycares so that it benefits all
Malaysia children.
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