An investigation of children's octave audiation and octave transfer abilities and their relationship to age and tonal music aptitude

This study explored children's abilities to determine if paired tonal patterns were the same or different when presented in higher or lower octaves (octave audiation), and similar or different when presented in two different octaves (octave transfer). The relationships among tonal aptitude, octave audiation, and octave transfer were examined, as well as the extent to which age and tonal aptitude were predictive of octave audiation and octave transfer abilities.;Subjects were 332 students enrolled in grades 1 through 4 in a large public elementary school. In addition to taking the Tonal Test of Gordon's (1982) Intermediate Measures of Music Audiation (IMMA-T), the children were administered two researcher developed tests: the Octave Audiation Test (OAT) and the Octave Transfer Test (OTT).;Results suggested that significant differences existed by age for both octave audiation and octave transfer abilities (p ≤ .05), and that each displayed developmental trends. Octave audiation abilities appeared to stabilize by approximately age 7, while octave transfer abilities appeared to stabilize by approximately age 9. Means were considerably lower on OTT, suggesting that octave transfer was a more difficult task than octave audiation for these children.;Students' octave audiation was more accurate when patterns were presented in a lower octave. Differences in octave transfer were not significant for any of the varying conditions (8va/Original, 8vb/Original, Original/8va, Original/8vb). Significant correlations (p ≤ .01) were found between tonal aptitude, octave audiation abilities and octave transfer abilities, with the strongest correlation between tonal aptitude and octave audiation abilities (71).;Fifty-one percent of the variance on OAT was related to tonal aptitude (p ≤ .00), with age contributing an additional 1.1% to the total variance (p ≤ .01). For OTT, 13.5% of the variance was accounted for by octave audiation abilities (p ≤ .01) as measured by OAT. Additional variance was accounted for by age (2.2%, p ≤ .02) and tonal aptitude (1.1%, p ≤ .04) in the step-down multiple regression analysis.;Further investigation is necessary to determine if octave audiation or octave transfer can be learned or taught, and if octave audiation is a prerequisite skill for octave transfer. These abilities must be explored more fully so that children may benefit from more effective instructional practices.