Acquisition of Musical Grammar: Is Adolescence a Sensitive Period?

Adolescents seem to absorb popular music with the ease of children acquiring language. The linguistic ability has long been associated with a pre-adolescent sensitive period of plasticity for language acquisition. Here we raise the possibility of a sensitive period for music acquisition, focusing in particular on adolescence. Most of our empirical research entails two successive tasks: first, a familiarity or preference rating of excerpts of popular music spanning 10 decades, and second, a surprise recognition test of the excerpts (with stylistically comparable foils). Differences in recognition performance arise as an interaction of the decade of popularity of the music and age cohort. Young children seem open to all styles whereas older age groups show priority for the music of their adolescence and early adulthood. A variation of this approach compares different age groups on recognition of native music and non-native music and native and non-native language. Preliminary data are consistent with the hypothesis of advantages for music during childhood and adolescence. These results are also consistent with the notion of two sensitive periods for music acquisition: the first in early childhood for a basic musical grammar and the second in adolescence for stylistic and emotional aspects of the music.