Música e surdez: a influência das representações mentais na percepção musical em pessoas surdas

Abstract

The present research investigated the musical experience of deaf people in the district of Sítio Alegre, in the city of Morrinhos in Ceará, and its main objective is to analyze mental representations’ influence on musical perception in people with deafness. Starting from the fact that deaf people do not have the possibility of perceiving music like hearing people, we understand by musical perception, the perception made from the felt musical vibrations. Thus, a bibliographic research was carried out on the research’s two main themes, namely: Inclusive Music Education and Deafness, and Mental Representations. Mental representations are images constructed through experiences and knowledge attributed by persons in their everyday life that arises from memory when stimulated. For this, we carried out an experiment of musical evaluation with participants who presented different degrees of deafness reproduction, from the vibratory sensations of the participants when holding a sound box reproducing two songs. The research protocol was organized around the following question: "What were you thinking about while you felt the sound box’s vibration?" in order to observe and analyze the participants' responses as a function of the mental images created during the musical appreciation of the music’s sound vibrations. This research presents a qualitative approach in which data collection was carried out through videos made during the experiment with each participant. From the analysis of the collected data, the results showed that the mental representations had a positive influence on the musical appreciation of some deaf participants and others that were not. Several factors, such as the limitation in communication of some deaf individuals, influenced the results obtained.