This article describes experiments conducted with the system and 3- to 5-year-old children. We highlight several dimensions of the study pertaining to music education, including attention span, spontaneous development of playing modes, and capacity to listen analytically. We describe very encouraging preliminary results and stress the importance of using reflective interactive systems for triggering musical interest in children and creating stimulating, nonsupervised music learning environments. We conclude by setting up our research in the context of the theory of flow as an optimal experience.

This paper addresses the issue of designing interactive systems that create flow experiences in users. I first describe an interactive musical system called the Continuator, which is able to learn the musical style of users in an agnostic, continuous fashion. I then describe experiments conducted with professional musicians and with 3 to 5-year old children and the Continuator. I show that these interactions are -- almost - typical of the Flow phenomenon, as introduced by Csikszentmihalyi. I then focus on the abstraction of the design principles behind the Continuator and propose the notion of Reflective Interactive System as a class of applications which trigger Flow experiences. Based on the analysis of the various psychological experiments conducted so far, I identify the issue of flexibility in interaction protocols as a crucial step to enhance the efficiency of Reflective Systems as we envisage them today.