Can music “mean” like language does?
February 11, 2007 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Health
I often speculate that it is the sonic and rhythmic aspects of language—the “music” of language—that my son Charlie (who is verbal, but minimally—a good deal of what his voice produces throughout the day is not words) is particularly attentive too. He always picks up on the tone of a person’s voice, to the harsher, tighter, sound of anger; to the change of pitch when one is stressed; to the radio-announcer glide of someone who is feeling peaceful-easy. A Feburary 8th post on Cognitive Daily reveals some evidence as to whether music can convey meaning in the same way as language; a related post appears on music as language appears in the February 9th Developing Intelligence.
Charlie and I have been listening to some of these excerpts and considering whether the Bach Prelude in C minor is “river” or “needle,” the Hindemith is “reality” or “illusion,” the Débussy is “sun” or “basement,” the Mozart Sonata for Piano is “angel” or “hero,” the Stravinsky is “red” or “blue,” the Shostakovich is “arrival” or leave.”
(Charlie seems to prefer the melodies that are more prone to generate that peaceful-easy feeling.)
We always sang, as well as talked, to Buddy Boy when he was a baby. We also had music playing a lot of the time (which in part has resulted in him wanting specific songs playing on his boombox to sleep to).
Buddy Boy had no language at all at two, but by 18 months had a few two word sentences (if you listened really closely).
Despite this language delay, when he was 18 mos. he sang two very clear stanzas of “You Are My Sunshine” at my sister’s wedding. He is extremely verbal now, and like your Charlie keys in acutely on tones of voice. His interest in music, however, has waned. I’m hoping to try to get him involved in formal lessons in another year or so, when he’s 8.
Correction. Math error.
It was 30 months for the two word sentences and singing at my sister’s wedding.
Yes.
Sam sings or hums a short melody that I’ve come to realize means, “I’m in pain or anticipating pain.”
He also sings or hums some things with us (”us” includes his siblings, who like to sing, especially his sister), just to make music. (He does not enjoy the “make noise with kid instruments, mostly percussion” activities his siblings do, though. If it were just his sister and a harmonica, he might like that.)
From the perspective of a former musician and autism mom — I wonder how this manifests itself in languages that are more tonal than ours? Those languages (such as Hmong) where a word can mean something different depending on the inflection and pitch of the word and phrase…
Hi Daisy,
I’ve been reading a lot about perfect pitch because my autistic daughter has it and as a really bad guitar player it really interests me, the concept that a person with a limited frame of reference could have perfect pitch.
This is a child who you can have her turn around, hit two notes on the piano at the same time and she can name both. I’ve been playing guitar for 20 years and still can’t tune it without an electronic tuner.
I believe I read somewhere that Chinese speakers and others whose language is more based on pitch obviously have better pitch than others. They speak a language in which the nuances are tonal.
My daughter doesn’t speak these languages, she barely speaks english but she does cry when anyone else sings unless it’s someone like Mariah Carey with her 200 octave range.
I’ve read that some people with perfect pitch say that you could no sooner mistake a note than you would mistake the color blue for the color pink. They say it’s that obvious. The question remains though, is there a connection to autism?
There is most definitely a connection to autism, but as autism is not a homogenous but a heterogenous disorder (e.g., not a single factor, as in a single gene) with many different interlapping and overlapping neurological,genetic and environmental possibilities, there are some children/adults (on a unified spectrum that includes neurotypical and atypical) who have highly concentrated abilities that to us okie dokie “neuro-typicals” appear somewhat bizzare or exceptional,such as savant auditory processing skills or visual-spatial capacities (e.g., the musical, poetic, artistic or mathematical genius). It is believed by some that there is overcompensation in certain cases of autism in general and autistic savants especially for their supposed “incapacity or impairment” with respect to other neurological (”normative”) functions, thus, we see an overcompensation or hyper-acceleration of usage in those other processing areas (i.e., auditory processing with extreme discernment and hypersensitivity to subtle variations and patternments of sound). However, a another way of looking at this is not under the guise of atypical or aberrant functioning, but to look a bit more receptively and see the empathic sensitivities of many people with autism spectrum challenges in general and particularly with those with recognizable savant skills (whether of the aytpical or neurotypical variety) as unused portions or latent windows into our own evolutionary potential. Now, conversely, our de-sensitization to the splendours of subtle sound-musical patternment, the ever fluid patternment that informs and sculpts the verbal (as an educator/therapist and poet I can attest to) is nothing to shout home about. In fact, our desensitivity in this area, however, wonderfully “neurotypical” can indeed represent an evolutionary decline!