THE EFFECTS OF TRAINING IN CONSERVATION OF DUPLE AND TRIPLE METER IN MUSIC WITH SECOND-GRADE CHILDRE

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of a specific kind of training program on the ability of second-grade children to conserve duple and triple meter under a variety of deformations--tonality, melody, harmony, melodic rhythm, accompaniment type, and tempo. The question was proposed: Can the conceptualization of duple and triple meter, as exhibited in conservation ability, become operational as early as the second-grade level? The training program employed in this study was based on those procedures found to be effective in accelerating the development of conservation ability in previous training programs in music and other areas of learning.;A conservation test requiring judgments pertaining to simple duple meter (2/4) and simple triple meter (3/4) was developed to determine second-grade children's ability to conserve meter. Twenty-four original tunes, which employed duple and triple meters under a variety of deformations, made up the meter-conservation test. These tunes were patterned after songs found in the second-grade songbooks of six basal music series. The subjects were asked to circle a "Yes" box if a tune moved in two's (or three's, depending on the test item); if the subjects did not believe the tune moved in two's (or three's), they were to circle a "No" box. Prior to listening to a group of three tunes (and their exact reproductions) on which conservation judgments were to be based, the subjects were asked to point to a model representative of duple or triple meter as a reminder that the meter to be conserved moved in that particular beat pattern.;The sample population in this study consisted of six intact second-grade classes--three classes in the experimental group and three classes in the control group. The meter-conservation test was administered as a pre-test to one-half of the children in each of the six classes. In the days immediately following the administration of the pretest, the training program was presented to the experimental group. This training program was distributed over the first ten minutes of nine regularly scheduled music periods which were thirty-five minutes in length; the training program was taught by each class's regular music teacher. The control group continued to receive regular music instruction during their regularly scheduled thirty-five minute music periods. The meter-conservation test was administered a second time as a posttest, but to only those children who were not pretested. Two weeks later, the same test was administered as a delayed posttest to the same students who had received the initial posttest.;The pretest and posttest scores were analyzed by means of analyses of variance utilizing the unweighted-means solution. Separate analyses of variance were performed on the pretest and posttest scores of the entire experimental group for each particular duple and triple meter-conservation model. All null hypotheses were tested at the .01 level of significance in order to reduce the chance that a Type I error would occur.;Findings from this study indicate that improvements in the meter-conservation ability of second-grade children did not occur as a result of the particular training program that was utilized. The failure of this training program to improve meter-conservation, however, might give support to the conclusions of previous studies which had reported that children before the age of nine and one-half seemed unable to grasp the concept of meter. It was found also that no particular meter-conservation model (duple or triple) was more effective than the others in the development of meter-conservation ability.