In Experiment 1, 3 year-old children tried to determine pitch sequences by matching them with pictures and musical sounds. The results showed that 3 year-olds had difficulty associating sounds with pictures and making choices between two stimuli. In Experiment 2, 97 children ages 2-6 were participants These children identified four musical sounds produced by Montessori bells. The children in Experiment 2 were more successful at identifying the sounds than the children in Experiment 1. Although it may not prove effective for 2-and 3-year old children, the results of Experiment 2 suggested a possible new method to evaluate the pitch discrimination abilities of young children.

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The experiment described in this paper was designed to investigate the acoustics of living spaces, with the aim of fostering the design of more comfortable environments acoustically optimized for infant childcare. Recently, incidents of infant abuse reportedly triggered by excessive crying have been on the rise. One cause, we hypothesized, could be the changing structure of Japanese homes. Using recordings of crying meant to be maximally stress-inducing to mothers, the experiment was designed to examine the effect of a change in the acoustic environment upon a listener's perception of an infant's voice. Subjects were asked to listen to two recordings of the same voice at 90dB±1dB, the first given a reverberation time of 270 ms (simulating an “anechoic environment”), and the second with a time of 970 ms (an “echoic environment”). Subjects reported that they felt “tired,” “uneasy,” and that they experienced “headache” and “ringing in the ears” at a higher rate in the echoic than in the anechoic environment. However, responses indicating hypothetical maternal behavior such as a desire to“determine why the baby is crying”or to“calm the baby”were reported at approximately equal rates in both environments. These results indicate that an echoic environment may exacerbate the stress experienced by a mother listening to a crying infant.Further research examining the ways in which actual mother-infant pairs play and communicate in varying acoustic environments is planned.

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The purpose of the present study is to analyze the characteristics of the living room space that provides comfortable environment for the infants and family members from the aspect of sound. This study focuses mainlyon the evaluation of the sound characteristics of the living space that support and maintain the development of verbal communication ability that can be cultivated significantly by the interaction between the infants and the parents.In this year, we directed our attention to the infant crying and study the relationship between the living space and the sound characteristics. We investigated the actual conditions of the sound pressure level (dB) and sound pitch (Hz) inherent to the infant crying. A total of 28 pairs of infants and mothers or fathers, two months to one year and 11 months in age, participated in the measurement. We recorded the infant crying at the site one meter apart from the infant's mouth in an anechoic room. The measurement data were analyzed and four patterns of sound characteristics were detected. The infant crying characterized by the high-frequency component and the large volume was recognized as a crying indicating increased emergency and appeared to have considerable effects on the surroundings. In this experiment, we take an approach to relate the parent's pattern of hearing of the infant crying with the sound environment inside of the room.The results of this study contribute to the process of remodeling of the living space, and to suggest for the recent childcare related problems including of child abuse.