Children's Knowledge and Feelings Align in Response to Emotional Music

Examining emotion recognition and response to music can isolate recognition of and resonance with emotion from the confounding effects of other social cues (e.g., faces). In a within-sample design, participants aged 5-6 years in the eastern region of the United States (N = 135, M-age = 5.98, SDage = .54; 78 female, 56 male; eight Asian, 43 Black, 62 White, 13 biracial, and nine "other") listened to clips of calm, scary, and sad music. In separate sessions, participants identified the emotional content of the music or reported on the feelings elicited by the music clip, with above-chance accuracy. Emotion recognition was associated with age and higher levels of child emotional verbal expressivity. Children with higher parent-reported empathy reported greater resonance with the emotion conveyed by music, specifically for sad music. Recognition and resonance were correlated (i.e., alignment), although the relationship varied as a function of the emotion expressed, with the greatest alignment for sad music. Results provide insights into emotion recognition and resonance in the absence of direct social signals and provide evidence that children's ability to recognize and resonate with emotion differs depending on characteristics of the music and the child.