Research: Babies need music to help them relate and speak

Research: Babies need music to help them relate and speak

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norman lebrecht

April 26, 2016

From a study at the US National Academy of Sciences:

We examined the effects of a randomized laboratory-controlled music intervention on music and speech processing in 9-month-old infants.

The Intervention exposed infants to music in triple meter (the waltz) in a social environment. Controls engaged in similar social play without music. After 12 sessions, infants’ temporal information processing was assessed in music and speech using brain measures [magnetoencephalography (MEG)].

Compared with controls, intervention infants exhibited enhanced neural responses to temporal violations in both music and speech, in both auditory and prefrontal cortices. The intervention improves infants’ detection and prediction of auditory patterns, skills important to music and speech.

Ignore the tabloid reports. Read the original research findings here.

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Comments

  • John Borstlap says:

    The infant in the picture surely is forced to listen to Philip Glass or Tom Adès.

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