Abstract: Recent work in the cognitive sciences conceives of mental life as an embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive (or 4E) phenomenon. This orientation emphasises the constitutive role of body, action, and socio-material environment in driving cognitive processes, stimulating important debates across a vast array of psychological and philosophical disciplines. However, because its principles and applications have not yet been properly addressed in the domain of musical development, it still remains unclear how the acquisition of musical skills might be understood in light of this approach, and what this can offer for practical areas like music education. To begin filling this gap, this talk will discuss central aspects of musical development and pedagogy through the lenses of 4E cognitive science. This will involve a focus on the dynamics infants adopt to explore (and engage) with their sonic environment in creative ways, and the presentation of recent empirical findings concerning sensorimotor integration in infancy, memory for newly learned melodies in adults, and collective forms of musical learning in non-musicians.
Bio: Andrea Schiavio is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Centre for Systematic Musicology at the University of Graz (Austria), and Vice-President of ESCOM - The European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music. His work combines empirical and theoretical research to explore the role of action and interaction for the acquisition of musical skills.