The Effect of Rhythm and Functional Music on Mental Defectives
- Author:
PICHOT, M.D.
Medecin Assistant des Hopitaux de Paris The term functional music is used to describe all music capable of modifying in a given direction the behaviour of those who hear it.
In the treatment of mental defectives, the modifications in behaviour which are expected are improvements either in general behaviour or in certain of its specific aspects. Though the term functional music is new, the art itself has a long history. It was excellently described as far back as 1846 by the great French precursor Seguin in his classic : Moral Treatment, Hygiene and Training of Idiots, thus? ” I have not yet seen idiots who did not express the greatest pleasure on hearing a piece of music… : Furthermore, idiots respond more readily to gay, rousing rhythmns than to slow or sad measures. … Certain idiots in a state of agitation have been calmed down by hearing sad songs, while strident and jerky sounds made by brass instruments and drums have produced movements in idiots hitherto inert, and to a certain extent, seemed to give a certain regularity to these movements. I even made use of military marches as a means of speeding up their jumping, climbing and running.”
The problem has been treated by many writers since Seguin, but few of their studies do more than paraphrase the sentences just quoted, although they often then attempted to solve several very different problems at one and the same time.
The first of these concerns the interest taken by mental defectives in music, and especially in music with a strongly marked rhythm. Certain writers have tried to push the analysis further and discover, on the one hand, the kind of music that interests the subjects most, and, on the other, the type of mental defective most interested in music.
Many writers have asserted, for instance, that 1 among mental defectives, mongols have a special interest in music. In point of fact, this assertion has never, to our knowledge, been subjected to any serious comparative study and should be treated with reserve.
The second problem is that of the musical aptitude of mental defectives ; for music can only modify the behaviour of a subject in so far’ as the latter is capable of perceiving its structure. The third problem is that of the effect of music with a marked rhythm on the behaviour of mental defectives?in short, the problem of functional music properly speaking. On this point it seems that modern writers have, on the whole, followed up Seguin’s indications. Some more special studies, however, have defined certain effects of music. In 1947, H. S. Whiting showed, for example, that the accident rate in a psychiatric hospital could be diminished if the patients had suitable music played to them at fixed hours.
In our service at the Vallee Foundation in Paris, we have been using gramophone records in an empirical fashion for several years. From this We thought we should be able to draw definite conclusions, but we very soon realized that an experimental study of the basis on which the use of such a therapeutic method rests, would have to be undertaken beforehand. It * Paper {translated from the French) read at a meeting arranged by Association of Mental Health Workers in connection with the International Congress on Mental Health, August 20th, 1948. seemed to us that the two fundamental elements were as follows : firstly, the perceptive aptitudes of mental defectives regarding music and more especially regarding musical rhythm, and secondly, the affective and emotional effect of the rhythms on these subjects. Starting from these studies we should be able to build up a sound therapeutic method the value of which has already been demonstrated by previous empirical experiments.
The Perception of Rhythm
What has come to be generally, though incorrectly, known as the “sense of rhythm” has never been systematically studied in mental defectives. In most cases writers seemed rather to be on the look-out for freaks. Seguin’s observations of ” idiot musicians ” are classical, like Trelat’s study of a woman whose musical talents brought Liszt and Meyerbeer to visit her ln the Salpetriere. Pezzalla and Heller have even reported cases of genuine ” performing idiots and talked of a hypertrophy of musical aptitude in certain defectives. The result of these scanty observations shows the possibility ?f the existence, in some mental defectives, of rhythmical aptitudes fairly similar to those of pOrmal subjects. With the help of our friend Fraisse, of the Institute of Psychology of the r’Orbonne, we have tried to determine the general level and distribution of rhythmic sense in defectives?a very complex problem.
Tor this ‘study we have devised a series of tests which (a) are simple enough to be applied to defectives, and (b) are diverse enough not to miss out any of the essential aspects of the aptitudes studied. In the description of the tests used, technical details of the actual exPeriments which will be described elsewhere, are omitted. These tests are as follows : 1- Spontaneous tempo. This is studied by recording the free tapping with a metal pencil. ?n a tapping board.
Parts, (a) reproduction by the subject of series of A3,4, etc., taps struck at regular intervals by the experimenter ; (b) reproduction of a series of identical groups separated by a short interval : 2, 2-2-2, etc., then 3-3, 3-3-3, etc. ; (c) reproduction of complex rhythmic patterns of increasing difficulty : 2-1, 3-1, 4-1, 5-1, 2-2, 3-2, 4-2, 5-2, 2-2-1, 3-2-1, 4-2-1, etc. . 3. Simple rhythmic induction studied by the simultaneous recording of the beats of a metronome ticking at 58, 100 and 138, and the taps of the subject who is trying to follow the rhythm on a tapping board. Marks are awarded from 1 to 4 according to the exactness of the synchronization.
4. Complex rhythmic induction. The subject is asked to beat time on the tapping board to music played on the gramophone. Four pieces of unequal difficulty are then played one after the other : a military march, a waltz, a jazz piano piece and a fragment of a ballet. The results are judged by two independent observers and marked from 1 to 4.
The subjects we studied were split into three groups :
A. Group of defectives whose I.Q. varied from 29 to 48 (seven in age group 6-9 ; six, 10-13 ; twelve, 14-17 ; five, over 18). B. Group of normal children having the same mental age as the defectives (their chronological ages being between 3 and 6).
C. Group of subjects of same chronological age-groups as the defectives.
The results were as follows : 1. Spontaneous tempo. Mental defectives and children of the same mental age have a rapid spontaneous tempo. The averages and distributions are practically identical. Subjects in Group C, however, have a much slower spontaneous tempo (Table I). We noted that there was a strong correlation between the spontaneous tempo and the chronological age (r = -f ? 53 without correction for attenuation). Interpretation of this result is difficult. We may provisionally consider it as due to the increased control of the higher integrating centres that comes with age. On the other hand, the study of the individual regularity of spontaneous tempo, studied by the standard deviation, shows us that mental defectives have as regular a tempo as subjects of the same chronological age (E.M. 3*8 and 3-4 per cent.) and greatly superior to the tempo regularity of children of the same mental age (6 ? 0 per cent.).
2. Perception of rhythmic forms. In practice, we obtained identical results from groups A and B, whereas group C was decidedly better ; this eliminated the possibility that subjects could get round the difficulty by counting the taps. Thus the perception of complex forms (Table II) allows us to deduce that mental development influences the perception of rhythmic forms. 3. Simple rhythmic induction. A study of Table III permits us to conclude that (a) the behaviour of mental defectives is identical with that of subjects of the same mental age and distinctly inferior to that of subjects of the same chronological age. (b) In the case of both 3 mental defectives and young children, the most difficult measure to follow is the slowest one, in other words, the one which is farthest removed from the spontaneous tempo.
4. Complex rhythmic induction. One first point that we must underline because of its importance for the problem of functional music is the extraordinary facility with which defectives and young children from 3 to 6 years are swayed by musical rhythm. During this test we only had to put the tapping board pencil into their, hands and play the music and quite spontaneously they tried to follow the rhythm. Now it has been noted that this spontaneity disappears with age. The behaviour of our normal subjects whose chronological age was over 10 or 12 years, showed a kind of inhibition especially at the beginning of the experiment, an obvious tendency to wish to reconstruct the rhythm intellectually rather than simply follow it.
The uncorrected results as set forth (on opposite page) in Table IV show that, on an average, Groups A and B are equal and inferior to Group C, except in the case of the military march when all three groups are equal. An analysis of the results, however, reveals that the superiority of Group C is due less to a general superiority than to the fact that it includes far fewer totally incapable subjects. It therefore appears very likely that aptitude for complex rhythmic induction does not really increase with age, but that above a certain mental level it is replaced by an intellectual construction which can, up to a point, compensate for lack of aptitude.
To sum up the whole of this experimental study, we may provisionally conclude that, generally speaking, mental defectives’ behaviour as regards rhythmic aptitudes is that of children of the same mental age and inferior to that of subjects of the same chronological age. In other respects, there are three points worth noting :
(a) The lower the mental age of defectives, the faster their spontaneous tempo, and the induction of simple rhythm is easier in proportion as this rhythm is faster, or, in other terms, comes closer to the spontaneous tempo.
(b) The perception of complex rhythms is identical in mental defectives and subjects of the same mental age, and inferior to that of subjects of the same chrono-. logical age.
(c) Complex musical rhythms are induced spontaneously by mental defectives. This aptitude for the induction of musical rhythms does not seem to be connected with intellectual development, the latter only permitting subjects with little rhythmic aptitude to compensate for the deficiency with a superimposed intellectual construc- f tion.
The Affective Value of Rhythm
There is no doubt that music with a strongly marked rhythm is of considerable affective value in the case of mental defectives, and this affective value is one of the essential causes of the efficacy of functional music. We possess, however, only very vague ideas concerning the nature and intensity of this affective value. Howard Hanson has attempted to formulate the affective action of rhythm in the following principles :
“1. Everything else being equal, the further the tempo is accelerated from the pulse rate to the upper limit of practical tempo, the greater becomes the emotional . tension.
“2. As long as the subdivisions of the metric units are regular and the accents remain strictly in conformity with the basic pattern, the effect may be exhilarating, but will not be disturbing.
“3. Rhythmic tension is heightened by the extent to which the dynamic accent is misplaced in terms of the metric accent.
” 4. The emotional effect of ‘ off balance’ accents is greatly heightened by an increase in dynamic power.”
But this study, the original purpose of which was to show ” the harmful effects of boogiewoogie on the mental state of American youth * is far from exhausting the subject. It seems to us that it would have been possible to tackle it indirectly through a study of the spontaneous rhythmic manifestations of mental defectives. These are, in fact, easy to observe, and a considerable amount of spadework has already been done. Here we can only give the general outlines of a problem on which we are already working at the Vallee Foundation. The spontaneous rhythmic manifestations of mental defectives consist chiefly of a swaying of the head or trunk, and incidentally in rhythmic sucking movements with the mouth. There are three main interpretations of these rhythmic movements.
According to the older writers like Vosin and Bourneville, they fall into the category of tics and are of purely neurological origin. More recently, after Kraepelin, they were TABLE I.
Spontaneous Tempo (Average Tempo) Tempo (1/100 sec.) Mental Def. Group B* 10 to 19 20 to 29 30 to 39 40 to 49 50 to 59 60 to 69 70 to 79 80 to 89 90 to 99 100 to 109 110 to 119 120 to 129 130 to 139 Total Means (1/100 sec.) 30 39 20 37 TABLE II. Perception of Complex Rhythmic Patterns Percentage of Success. Patterns 2-1 2-2 2-2-1 3-1 3-2 3-2-1 4-1 4-2 4-2-1 5-1 5-2 5-2-1 Mental Def. I Group B 66’ 60 46’ 43’ 40 16 30 16 16 26 20 13 80 70 55 70 50 15 40 30 15 30 30 10
TABLE III. Rhythmic Induction (Metronome Rhythm) Metronome Rhythm 138-min. 100-min. 58-min. Mental Def. 3-03 2-9 2-33 Group B 2-95 3-05 2-65 TABLE IV. Rhythmic Induction (Musical Rhythm) Musical Rhythm Mental Def. Group B Group C Military March Waltz Piano Jazz Ballet 3-2 2-3 2-2 2-6 305 2-4 2-1 2-5 305 2-73 2-8 3-05 Percentage of the scores 1-2 37-5 40-1 9-2 TABLE V. Frequency of Rocking in Mental Deficiency Mental age No. of Subjects % rocking to 3 3 to 5 6 to 8 9 to 12 69 25 29 10 48 16 10 10
Mean scores for the seven subjects aged 6 to 9. For the twenty-three subjects aged 10 or more the mean score is 4*0
{maximum score). considered similar to catatonic stereotypes, and C. J. C. Earl showed that in some cases they were in fact manifestations of a catatonic Psychosis of defectives. This interpretation by no means excludes the following one. In 1912, Clarke and Atwood, using Freud’s Drei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie as a hypothesis, were the first to show that these ” habit movements ” were manifestations of a primitive auto-eroticism. In 1927, Potter confirmed this view. It is interesting to note that the same kind of swaying is seen in normal young children. R. A. Spitz of New York has recently made a special study of this manifestation from the angle of dynamic psychology, and has agreed with the obviously auto-erotic nature of this behaviour. He declared that, generally speaking, an essential characteristic of the auto-erotic behaviourisms of sucklings was that they were rhythmic. It seems, therefore, that one may legitimately consider the swaying of mental defectives as equivalent to the swaying of sucklings,, and as having an equivalent affective value, in support of this point we should remember, on the one hand, that spontaneous swaying is more frequent in defectives in proportion as their mental level is low, and, on the other, that in the isolated cases where swaying is met with above the mental age of 5, psycho-analysis of the subject, which we cannot go into here, shows the existence of an affective fixation at an early stage.
If we admit this conclusion, we may foresee that the younger the subject, or more assimilable to a young subject, the more marked will be the pleasure effect. In this way it would be easy to confirm our hypothesis by showing that the affective value of rhythm in a civilization is greater when that civilization is more primitive, or when the music is intended for a more primitive affective group or for a group in a state of retrogression at an affectively primitive stage. We shall find a further confirmation of our hypothesis in the fact to which we have already referred, namely, that after 10 to 12 years, subjects- show a certain inhibition concerning rhythm and lose the spontaneity of induction observed in the youngest subjects.
Conclusion
From this research, the first results of which we have briefly set forth, we may already draw certain conclusions concerning the use of functional music. 1. Functional music with a well-defined rhythm may be used for its pleasure value. Its effect will then be most noticeable when the level of development of the mentally deficient is lowest. The practical result of the use of this music with pleasure value will be to fix the attention of the children and afterwards to reduce their restlessness, and the effect is shown, for example, in the accident rate.
2. Functional music will be most effective from the pleasure point of view when it comes nearest to the rhythmic possibilities of the defectives, that is to say, when its rhythm is simple enough and well enough defined to be grasped by the subjects, and when its tempo is fast enough to come near to their own spontaneous tempo.
3. The value of slow functional music with a well-defined rhythm is probably quite different. In proportion as it varies from the spontaneous tempo of the child, it probably loses its pleasure value. It is, however, probable that it has an educative value permitting a progressive development of the processes of affective maturation, which normally lead to a slowing down of the subject’s spontaneous tempo. It is probably in this light that Seguin’s observation on the calming effect of music should be interpreted. {From the Clinique des Maladies Mentales, Paris, Prof. J. Delay and the Institut de Psychologie, Paris, Prof. Pieron.) i
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