instinct and wind instruments

Clara is trying to play my melodica. First, I blow into the mouthpiece and encourage her to play the notes. They toot in little random toots. Then, inevitably, she goes for the intriguing mouthpiece and tries to blow into it herself.

Once or twice, she succeeds — at first. Then, very soon after that, she stops blowing and starts vocalizing, "uh... uh... uh... uuuuuh...," into it, with the mouthpiece just sitting in her open mouth.

I was puzzled at how this development went backward, and has done so a few times, until now all she does is the vocal sounds. Then I remembered the pigs.

A while back, when places had window displays, a bank thought it would be cool to have one with live pigs depositing money into piggy banks. They trained the piggies the way you train piggies: by rewarding them with food. Every time they deposited coins, some food was released. (At a rate of tuppence a bag, I'm guessing?)

This worked for a while, but then eventually the piggies started just nuzzling the coins. A puzzlement, until figured out that the piggies were rooting at the coins. They were digging at them, the way they dig for food. So, the training that gets them to associate food with depositing those coins properly eventually goes so deep that they associate the coins themselves with food and promptly start rooting uselessly at them.

Thus the question of instinct versus culture is answered. (Partially.)

So, I figure this is what's happening with Clara. She knows how to blow, and she blows and gets sound, and then, associating the making of sounds with one's mouth so strongly with vocal sounds — the sounds she's best at producing — she just starts singing.


(Not really Clara. No Brake kid would ever have hair that long.)