Novelty-based cognitive processes in unstructured music-making settings in early childhood

Humans have the capacity to invent novel ideas and to create new artifacts that affect the surrounding environment. However, it is unclear how this capacity emerges and develops in biological systems. This paper presents an empirical study which investigates the development of novelty-based cognitive processes in the context of unstructured music-making activities in early childhood. We used principles of intuitive theories of emergence, the paradigm of overlapping waves of mechanisms of change and theories of music cognitive development to theoretically conceptualize the developmental process in the specific context. We applied the methodological principles of micro-genetic analysis for the development of an annotation scheme of micro-behaviors, which correspond to a set of cognitive processes. We took into consideration child's behavioral manifestations of music-induced affective engagement, as an indicator of intrinsic motivation. Our results suggest that the process of transition from spontaneous towards deliberate actions develops through exploratory actions, evaluation of the outcomes, reasoning and planning. The structure of these actions appears in the form of dynamic overlapping waves rather than in a linear or iterative manner. Additionally, our results indicate that children in early years make use of the affordances of the provided tools to scaffold their transition from concrete visual representation of sonic features towards abstract musical thinking, which suggests that musical development appears with the generative tension between action and symbol. Implications and future work are discussed regarding the development of intelligent robotic systems for user adaptive scaffolding of the observed mechanisms of change.