To Hum, or not to Hum: Kindergartener's Pitch Acuity During Humming and Singing

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the effectiveness of humming as a viable musicking activity based on measures of children's pitch acuity. Students are kindergarteners from a public elementary school in northern Delaware. Based on each participant’s homeroom assignment, these students will be placed in one of two groups during music instruction: (a) singing instruction only and (b) singing and humming instruction. As all kindergarteners will be participating in music instruction, no data will be collected for students who opted out of the study. Students were pretested in their humming and singing accuracy (pitch reproduction acuity), followed by four weeks of instruction. The posttest documented students' humming and singing accuracy using the Wise and Sloboda (2008) rating scale for singing accuracy in song performance. Student data were analyzed through mean, median, and standard deviation, and comparative data were analyzed using a t-test. Findings showed mixed results in the effectiveness of humming as a viable musicking activity. Significant growth was found across all measures in both humming and non-humming classes. However, greater significance was observed for students in classes that had music later in the school year, indicating that time influences kindergarteners' musical growth. Findings also indicated that exposure to music instruction has an impact on kindergarteners' willingness to perform music.