Five-Year-Old Children Identify Emotions in Music Along Valence and Intensity Dimensions

Abstract

Music is a highly effective medium for communicating emotions among enculturated adults. In Western music, emotion perception is influenced by intensity cues (e.g., tempo and loudness) and valence cues (e.g., major vs. minor mode). Here, 5-year-old Canadian children (N = 57, 26 boys, 31 girls, M_age = ~5.5 years) and adults (N = 59, 45 women, 9 men, 5 non-binary/did not report, M_age = ~18.5 years) rated music on valence or intensity. Children's ratings were positively correlated with adults' for both valence (r = 0.914) and intensity (r = 0.800) and both groups used similar features to make judgements. Results demonstrate that children perceive valence and intensity in music and point to the importance of testing children's emotion perception across the full valence–intensity dimensional space.