Early Childhood Development in Music

An excerpt from Music and Intelligence in the Early Years by John M. Feireraband:

As we learn to use our minds, we process information through certain conditioning. If, for example, we learn music as a logical/mathematical exercise-such as learning to play an instrument through reading, decoding the relationships of symbols, and hence using the instrument to hear music-we establish pathways that will understand music only from this intellectual framework. If, however, the musical mind is engaged in early stimulation through such activities as hearing and responding to music through singing and movement and playing by ear, then we stimulate music intelligence. Stimulating music intelligence appropriately from the earliest experiences is necessary if the pathways are to be built to understand musical phenomena from a musical perspective. An individual who can read a piano score with few errors but cannot express music by ear on the keyboard has learned to use his/her logical/mathematical intelligence rather than his/her music intelligence to understand musical phenomena.