Music as an audiovisual experience in childhood: what it tells them, they understand and feel from the sound

Abstract

This study looks into the understanding of audiovisual music in childhood, addressing an unexplored space which is important due to its cultural immersion and impact, thus understanding children’s experience with everyday music in large multimodal spaces. The objective is to examine how the music of the favorite audiovisual pieces of children aged 11 to 14 produces meaning and significance from their perceptions. These perceptions are explored after listening to and/or viewing 14 sequences edited in different versions, using a mixed methodology. The results show four content analyses comparing the responses to separate exposures to Sound and Image by Versions, Listening Only and By Audiovisual Pieces to ultimately obtain their composition by factors: Emotional, Cognitive and Narrative. Four significant conclusions are obtained from the highly inductive study carried out: 1) The construction of sonic thinking is produced by the articulation of emotional, cognitive and narrative aspects with a prominent presence of the first two, 2) Music has a decisive importance in the entire process, 3) The emerging methodology used has made it possible to show children's perceptions about the audiovisual experience and 4) The results obtained are consistent with the principles of Vigotsky reviewed in the bibliographic review.