Lu, Can; (2024) Primary School Children’s Singing Behaviour in Hunan Province, China. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

Text Can_Lu_Can Lu's thesis FINAL 20032024.pdf - Accepted Version Access restricted to UCL open access staff until 1 April 2025. Download (7MB)

Abstract

The current study explores Chinese Primary school children’s singing behaviour. N = 1,539 singing performances were collected from N = 1,193 children aged from 6+ to 11+, drawn from six schools in Hunan Province, China. All participants sang three songs: Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Donkey (a Chinese nursery song), and Happy Birthday, with vocal products analysed against two existed rating scales: the Singing Voice Development Measure (SVDM) scale and the Vocal Pitch-Matching Development (VPMD) scale. Older participants and girls tended to have more developed singing behaviour than younger participants and boys. Urban children and children from higher-income families tended to show better singing behaviour. However, the differences by sex, geographic location and income were reduced for the oldest participants. Compared with English data collected from the National Singing programme Sing Up reported by Welch et al. (2009a), Chinese participants and English children (who did not receive Sing Up training) showed a similar level of development across different age groups. In addition, a smaller cross-section (n = 134) of participants’ singing performances were analysed using a newly created system of note-by-note pitch analysis, called the Melodic Analysis for Pitch-Matching (MAPM) system. It was found that there was a significantly positive correlation between scores measured by the MAPM system and related scores measured by the main VPMD scale. By using the colour characteristics of the MAPM system, it was found that participants tended to make fewer key changes with increasing age during the Primary school period. There was a significant negative correlation between the number of keys used to sing a song and the related scores of vocal register use. Furthermore, the vocal pitch-matching accuracy tended to decrease with increasing size of musical intervals. Older children tended to match larger musical intervals more accurately. Five common pitch characteristics were revealed by the colour characteristics of the MAPM system. (i) For a target song starting with a tonic, participants’ selfselected starting pitch was generally one to two semitones sharper than the model. (ii) Participants tended to repeat their pitch errors when vocally matching similar melodic phrases within a target song. (iii) When vocally matching a wide upward musical interval in a target song, they tended to match the first pitch of the interval sharply. (iv) Participants were more accurate in singing a high target pitch if approached within the melody by a small interval. If the high pitch required a large upward interval (such as an octave), they tended to be much less accurate in replicating the high pitch target. (v) When vocally matching continuous upward pitches toward a lift point, many participants tended to match them flat, and tended to be sharp when matching descending patterns.

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