Musical communication among parents and their children: an analysis tool to study their interaction

Musical communication between adults and children is a widely studied phenomenon in the field of music education and psychology. In the research carried out to date, a variety of methodological designs have been used, based mainly on the perceptions of adults, to investigate the different aspects of these musical interactions. Thus, there is little information about the characteristics of participation in the parent-infant relationship considering both adults and children’s musical behaviours. The aim of the study in which this article is framed was to identify the characteristics of parent and child participation in musical interactions involving vocal expression in the family environment, with the particularity of the data having being obtained directly from their everyday communication scenarios. The participants were five families with at least one child younger than 36 months. Data was collected by means of an audio recording device (DLP) associated with LENA^® software. This article describes a tool for analysis that was designed and validated according to the particularities of the data. The MICAD – Musical Interaction among Children and Adult Descriptors – integrates characteristics of elements of both adult-child communication and the musical content present in their encounters. Thanks to the analysis provided by the MICAD it is possible to reach a deeper understanding of participants’ individual behaviours and distinguish different models of musical interaction between children and adults.