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"Studies Show Infants Are Musical" How are infants as music listeners? How well do they use musical concepts to organize their musical experience? For many years, the capabilities of infants have been ignored, or have been studied only with respect to issues dealing with language. However, in recent years, systematic programs of research have undertaken to elucidate the origins of musical capabilities at the earliest stages of human development.
Musical abilities can be determined in such young, pre-verbal children by careful observation of their behavior by a trained experimentor. An infant sits on its mother's lap. To the left and right of the infant are two loudspeakers and next to each speaker is a transparent plastic box which is ordinarily dark. When the infant turns its head toward a loudspeaker, it can be rewarded by illumination of the adjacent box within which an animated toy is activated. During testing, the experimenter attracts the infant's attention by manipulating puppets or other objects. A background musical stimulus (as simple as a single note or more complicated, such as a melody) is played repeatedly from one loudspeaker.
At random times, the experimenter pushes a hidden button that instructs a computer to either continue the same stimulus or present a slightly different stimulus. If the infant notices the change from background to the new stimulus, it will turn toward the speaker and be rewarded with the sight of the animated toy. Restlessness and random head movements can be ruled out by showing that there are few or no head turns when there is no change compared to head turns for stimulus changes. The first question is whether infants can actually hear the difference between two adjacent notes, that is can they discriminate differences as small as one semitone, the smallest interval used in Western musical compositions. The answer is yes; in one study, five month old infants were found to be able to discriminate differences in frequency that were much less than the differences between two adjacent notes in the musical scale, so they have the basic sensory capability to perceive adjacent pitches.
What about the perception of melody? Adults perceive melody not by remembering the exact pitches but rather by remembering the relationships between notes. For example, we instantly recognize melodies as the same regardless of whether they are played by instruments that differ in pitch, or are played by the same instrument in a different key. Melodies are characterized by the exact intervals between pitches but even here, adults also pay attention to the pattern of increases and decreases of pitch, the so-called "contour" of a melody. Sandra Trehub and her colleagues at the University of Toronto, Missisauga, Ontario, Canada have studied the perception of melodies as part of a systematic program of research on the musical capabilities of infants. They have found that indeed infants 8-11 months of age do perceive and remember melodic contour. If the direction of pitch changes in a melody is altered by as little as one note, such as a decrease in a note instead of the usual increase, then infants turn toward the loudspeaker when this new melodic contour is played. These findings show that infants use the adult-like listening strategy of attending to global pitch relationships rather than the detailed notes themselves.
Rhythm and tempo are basic building blocks of music. Adults organize sound sequences by grouping them into discrete phrases. Grouping is known to be a way to enhance auditory memory, as when we try to remember lengthy telephone numbers. Composers appreciate memory limitations by writing music in phrases. Professor Trehub's laboratory has found that infants, like adults, also mentally segment sequences of sound into "chunks". Adults also recognize the same melody independent how rapidly or slowly it is played. To determine if infants 7-9 months of age also recognize melodies independent of tempo, they were presented the same melodies at different rates. Infants did not respond to a change in tempo of the same melody, thus showing the same listening strategy as adults. Change in rhythm are easily detected by adults. To study infants' processing of rhythm, the same notes were played in various rhythmic combinations, e.g., 2,1 (XX-X) contrasted with 1,2 (X-XX). Changes of rhythm from the background rhythm were instantly detected.
In summary, infants have surprising adult-like capabilities in the way that they perceive and attend to musical stimuli. We reviewed here some of the findings on melody, tempo and rhythm. The results of further studies on early human musical capabilities will be the subject of future reports. But for the present, it is clear that there is a rich field of inquiry about music and infancy, that infants do possess the capabilities of perceiving and mentally organizing music and therefore "The Musical Infant" not only exists but it is the normal human infant.
in "MuSICA, The Music &Science Information Computer Archive", Norman M. Weinberger
"The Musical Foetus" At what age do musical capabilities first appear? Perhaps at birth or even soon after the functional development of the auditory system in utero. Peter G. Hepper, reporting in the Irish Journal of Pscyhology (1991, 12, pp 95-107), studied neonates 2-4 days of age who had been exposed to the theme tune of a popular TV program while their mothers were pregnant. When the same tune was presented after birth, the neonates exhibited changes in heartrate and movements. More remarkably, fetuses of 29-37 weeks gestational age also showed specific behavioral responses to tunes played earlier in pregnancy. In both experiments, behavioral responses were specific to the tune to which they had been exposed. These results would seem to indicate that the learning and remembering of a melody can occur not only before birth but actually before or at the beginning of the third trimester.
in "MuSICA, The Music &Science Information Computer Archive", Norman M. Weinberger
"The Earliest Music Lessons" Music lessons come in many forms. There are formal lesson, which are highly structured and follow a carefully worked out series of increasing complexities. There are also informal lessons. Most often these consist simply of watching and listening to someone perform. Both provide opportunities to learn about music and both promote and encourage the incorporation of a musical sense into cognition and emotion. Today we consider informal music lessons, in particular the earliest lessons in music, those of the human infant.
In the inaugural issue of Music Research Notes, we highlighted the surprising musical capacities of infants. Also noted were some parallels between music and language competencies and the fact that infant language behaviors are strongly reinforced and encouraged by parents and caregivers, in contrast to musical behaviors, which are not. Here, we expand on this theme, focusing on a generally ignored but hardly insignificant fact. Infants receive music "lessons" beginning immediately after birth, from parents and others. These lessons are in the form not only of music but also of language. Although music and language are normally viewed as quite separate, they actually have fundamental commonalties, particularly as practiced to infants.
Let's begin with language. Parents, siblings, relatives, virtually everyone speaks to the newborn child. However, this sort of speech turns out to be quite different from other speech, so called "normal" speech. In what ways is "baby talk", more generally referred to as infant-directed speech, different? In several way, as revealed by extensive scientific study. First, the content is simple. Infants do not understand complex and abstract speech and thus such speech is avoided when talking to them. Second, baby talk often involves non-words, repeated sounds .... "cootchy-cootchy-coos", if you will. Third, infant directed speech is often structured to arouse attention and so the words and other sounds targeted for infants are themselves reinforced by the infant's behavior. What works is often repeated, what doesn't is often discarded in a given situation. We will return to this interactive aspect a bit later, noting for now that the baby is not merely the passive recipient of speech.
Together these and perhaps other factors result in infant-directed speech whose prosody is in marked contrast to that of normal speech. It has simple repeating pitch contours (patterns of pitch changes) and slower tempo, often with an overall higher and more restricted range of pitch. Often, vocal contact with infants has a rather sing-song character and the dividing line between this type of speech and singing, with or without words, is not always clear.
In any event, speech to infants does, of course, constitute lessons in language, more specifically lessons in speech, for in the absence of hearing speech, normal speech fails to develop. And to the extent that such speech has musical qualities, it also provides lessons in music.
But of course infants hear quite a lot of sound that is unambiguously music, because people sing to them. Lullabies are devoted almost exclusively to children, beginning in infancy. And interestingly, lullabies have many of the same characteristics as infant-directed speech. Thus both have simple pitch contours, and repeating rhythms. Furthermore both contain many elongated vowel sounds. These characteristics are not restricted to nationality or locale. Rather, they are found across cultures; those investigated to date are North, Central and South American, North European, East Asian and Central Asian. In each case lullabies have the same basic features.
This cross-cultural commonalty raises an interesting question. Is there something about lullabies that is readily identifiable across cultures? Do ordinary listeners not trained in music, who do not understand a different language or the culture from which it springs, know a lullaby when they hear one? Trehub and her colleagues addressed this question by asking English speaking adults to listen to two songs each from several cultures and pick the one which was the lullaby. Listeners were correct far more often than chance. Of note, lullabies were picked on the basis that they were the simpler of the two songs in a pair. Moreover, this determination was made even when all songs were altered from their original recordings by electronic filtering to remove words and even when the songs were electronically altered so they had the same timbre. In a follow-up experiment, listeners failed to correctly identify lullabies when sound cues that indicate vocal quality were removed. The authors concluded that lullabies were detected on the basis of their sounding similar to prosodic the characteristics of speech to infants.
As mentioned above, casual observation indicates that infants are not merely passive listeners. The way that they react to vocal communication is noted by the speaker or singer, whose vocal behavior in turn might be affected. This issue has now been studied systematically in an experiment on the contribution of the infant (age range four to thirteen months) to the quality of maternal singing in two cultures, North American and East Indian. Mothers sang a song of their choice both with their infant present and absent. Adult listeners judged for which of the two recordings the infant was present. The songs selected included many play songs (e.g., "Twinkle-Twinkle...") and also religious songs and some lullabies but the findings pertain to all of these types. Songs in the presence of infants were detected successfully within both cultures. Furthermore, correct identification was also found across cultures. Some of the cues apparently used to make correct judgments were the emphasis on sustained vowels, more gliding between pitch levels and slightly slower singing when infants were present. Thus, there is a distinctive style of singing to infants. It appears to depend on an interaction between singer and infant listener and its features are closely related to infant-directed speech.
Overall, it now seems clear that there is little distinction between infant-directed speech and song, that infants react to the prosodic and musical qualities of the two forms of vocal communication, and that the earliest of language lessons are in no sense merely linguistic. These conclusions support the view that the new human comes "equipped" with both language and music competencies.
A final point to ponder. While language lessons increase intensively and always evolve from informal to formal as children enter formal education, music lessons generally don't. Parents and family increase their speaking to young children but it seems that they generally stop singing to them. Perhaps parents should not only continue to sing but also encourage young children to sing as well as to speak. If their early music lessons continued, informal though they may be, greater development of musical as well as linguistic abilities might be attained.
in "MuSICA, The Music &Science Information Computer Archive", Norman M. Weinberger
"Sing, sing, sing!" Research indicates that singing has a strong biological basis, appears as song babbling in infants, undergoes regular developmental stages in young children and can facilitate cognitive abilities.
Birds do! Bugs do it! Even gibbons in the trees do it! Let's do it. Let's .... sing, sing, sing!
Many readers will recognize this as a paraphrase of a popular song of long ago -- Let's Fall In Love". While sex may be almost universal in the Animal Kingdom (don't forget the creatures that don't need a partner to reproduce), love as an almost universal is not so clear. In fact, singing might be more widespread than love.
However, many would disagree. This point of view dismisses grasshopper song as just so much noise, holds that whale singing isn't really all that musical and even regards birdsong as just pleasant twittering. Dismissal of animal song as not being "genuine singing" is typically homocentric. One would have thought the fact that humans are not the center of the Universe, nor our Milky Way galaxy, not our Solar System, not even this "third rock from the sun" should bring at least a moment's pause, if not a bit of humble reflection. The claim that only humans really sing at least raises the question of the definition of singing. Without getting deeply into this issue, we might at least note that research has detailed the musical aspects of the rhythmic/melodic vocalizations of countless species.
Analysis of the animal vocalizations termed "singing" amply attests to their complexity. For, example birdsong is intricate in content and pattern. And interestingly, birdsong is believed by many scientists to provide "... the most adequate model for studying the learning processes of human language." Paralleling the case of human language, songbirds also must hear vocalizations to learn to sing and do so within a critical period of development in order to attain competency. Additionally, birdsong is used to communicate quite specific information to other birds of the same species. Further, different discrete groups of brain cells in songbirds are responsible for different aspects of learning to sing and producing song, as appears to be the case in humans. So there are many commonalties between birdsong and human language.
A second and last example is that of the vocalizations of our primate cousin, the gibbon. These are of sufficient complexity to warrant the term "song" without any great stretch of either the imagination or the language. Thus, the songs of male gibbons are organized "... within a framework of rules that define regular patterns in the placement and order of note types." When the meaning of such songs was determined behaviorally, it was discovered that the "... proper sequential organization of notes is required to encode the meaning of the song...". Don't our songs have similar, if not identical, characteristics?
Neither example is intended to suggest that human song evolved directly from either songbirds or gibbons; neither of these taxa constitute our direct ancestors. Rather, such findings suggest that human singing is not unique and that it may be biologically based, perhaps in the sense that the hominid capacity for song may have had some selective advantage in the passing on of one's genes. This possibility aside, some workers view song as a stage in the evolution of language. Thus, Bruce Richman, writing in the journal Contemporary Anthropology, notes that many researchers categorize human vocalization into two opposed systems, expressive sounds (e.g., sighing, crying, laughing) and speech. Richman believes that a third type of vocalization lies between them -- singing. "Singing and speech seem very different; ... singing is more expressive of emotions than speech." He further holds that the social functions of singing provide something that speaking does not do. "... group singing gives ... a strong, direct feeling of social cohesion and solidarity." Finally, he proposes that singing "... served as an evolutionary transitional state between primate-like vocalizations and speech.
What about human song, particularly in infants and children? The appearance and development of song in infants and children has been studied in some detail. (For very informative broad reviews of musical development see Shuter-Dyson and Gabriel, 1981 and Hargreaves, 1986). During the first year of life, song babbling is evident and recognizable spontaneous singing can be observed as early as six months of age. Ries reported that spontaneous singing at seven months of age was quite distinctive.
Researchers have identified a developmental sequence. Early singing consists largely of melodic-rhythmic patterns of contour (pattern of higher and lower notes), without accuracy of pitch. Dowling reports that at approximately two years of age, songs usually consist of the repetition of a single brief melodic phrase, e.g., "Hoppy-hoppy run 'round the road". Complexity increases with age with the addition of more phrases. Recognition of the correct pitch may develop as early as the third year, although singing the correct pitch is usually not present for several years.
Welch has provided a good review of the development of child song, salient features of which are quoted here. After babbling, in which infants often play with "... glissandi and groups of musical pitches and phrases in a repetitive fashion ... words and fragments of song text ... become the focus of attention, followed by certain rhythmic features and, subsequently, the pitch components." The basic learning hierarchy appears to be: "Words -> Rhythm -> Pitch" This develops further: "Pitch Contour -> Individual Phrase Stability -> Overall Key Stability". "By the age of five to six years, young children's singing may have acquired many of the features of the significant adult models."
That key features of adult song are present so early does not imply that songs of young childhood are miniature adult songs. Veldhuis studied the spontaneous singing of four year olds in a free-choice activity period in preschool. She reported that the songs had very clear organizational patterns, unlike adult patterns; they generally had a restricted range of pitch intervals but with distinct brief melodies. Veldhuis further explored the situations in which singing occurred. She found that the children's singing was stimulated by objects, such as musical instruments, and by environmental sounds. Singing was found to often spread through "vocal contagion". Importantly, Veldhuis noted that singing had clear social functions (e.g., communication and cooperation) at this age.
Other detailed observations of naturalistic behavior have documented the spontaneity of singing and other music making in young children. For example, Miller studied three to five year olds in a preschool setting and found that they freely engage in exploring and manipulating melodic and nonmelodic instruments, create songs and imitate rhythms by bodily movements. The children chant and sing to recorded music, without specific instruction or encouragement.
In addition to the systematic description of childsong, a few researchers have also asked whether singing in children has other effects. Positive findings have been reported. For example, ten weeks of group musical activities including singing are reported to increase scores on tests of vocabulary and language in two to five year old developmentally delayed children.
Kalmar reported several positive effects of singing in normal children in a long term study. She examined the effects of the Kodaly method of singing instruction (involving the accompaniment of music with rhythmic movements and the verbal or physical representation of songs) on several measures. Three year olds were assigned either to the experimental group, which received twice-weekly special singing lessons over a three year period, or to the control group, which attended only regular nursery school programs. The experimental group showed greater improvement than the control group on measures of motor development (particularly coordination), abstract conceptual thinking, play improvisation, originality, and verbal abilities. There were no differences in drawing ability or overall IQ between the two groups. The findings both document the potential benefits of singing education on cognitive and motor development and also show that measurable developmental benefits need not involved IQ scores. While these findings are quite provocative, causal attribution to singing per se would require a control group that also received enriched experience of a different type. One would hope for follow-up studies.
In summary, while no one would claim that singing in animals is the same as singing in humans, nonetheless animal song has many of the characteristics of human song. And it may be that song is related to the evolution of speech. Observations of the spontaneous behavior of infants and children show that singing is present early in life, exhibits regular developmental stages and serves bio-social roles. Thus, singing may be a biological imperative with both individual and group functions. Quite apart from issues of its biological bases, singing appears capable of promoting several cognitive processes and even motor coordination. But whether or not the benefits prove to be caused exclusively by singing instruction, most parents and teachers would be pleased to have any means of facilitating the mental and physical development of infants and young children. Thus, Kalmar's findings should not be ignored. Additional focused research and application are certainly warranted.
It is fascinating and particularly instructive that infants and children readily make use of the one musical instrument with which they come "equipped", their voices. Perhaps parents, other caregivers and indeed all adults should listen to them more closely, encouraging singing as much as we encourage language. Then the apparently natural activity and desire of children to sing could be used for their own benefit, both directly musical and indirectly to other aspects of their own development. A fundamental precept is that society has a basic responsibility to help each individual develop to her or his fullest capacity. Singing seems to be a means to promote both musical competence and full development , which clearly are compatible goals.
in "MuSICA, The Music &Science Information Computer Archive", Norman M. Weinberger
"Lessons of the Music Womb"
Copyright © 1999 Norman M. Weinberger and the Regents of the University of California. All Rights Reserved. Young children and even infants are known to have surprisingly complex abilities to perceive and respond to basic components of music. This musical competency, evident long before the development of speech or the ability to play a musical instrument, raises the question of the earliest age at which the nervous system and brain can adequately process, learn and remember music. Increasing evidence suggests that the answer is "well before birth". In short, the womb appears to be the first concert hall.
Toward the latter part of the 19th Century there arose, as never before, a great interest in understanding the mental capabilities of animals. Energized by Darwin’s writings, both scientists and the lay public became fascinated with the animal mind. Anecdotes were gathered and published, usually attesting to an animal's remarkable, one might say unbelievable, powers. One such report concerned two mice in the countryside who found themselves unable to cross a wide stream. They searched about and, finding a dried cow pie, hauled it to the water's edge. Shoving it into the stream, one got in front and paddled while the other sat at the "stern", using its tail to steer safely to the other side, where they disembarked happy and dry. The truth of this tale was "attested" by the fact that the observer was a local clergyman, whose veracity could hardly be denied. However, he did admit to sipping wine during a picnic with his lady friend while they observed the remarkable intelligence of the two field mice.
It is true that the capabilities of animals have been underestimated. But overestimation is not the appropriate remedy. The corrective is to perform objective and replicable observations of behavior.
Interestingly, the human infant has suffered from the same sort of underestimation as that of animals prior to Darwin's time. In fact, the failure to appreciate the mental capabilities of infants lasted well past the middle of the Twentieth Century. Because they lack speech and spend so much time eating and sleeping, the presumption was that not much cognition was going on inside the infant head. That view has been largely dissipated with the increasing application of objective, replicable measurement of infant behavior, particularly within the last quarter of the Century. One type of competence, previously discussed in these pages, concerns the fact that infants have considerable musical abilities. For example, they perceive and remember melodic contour, the pattern of rising and falling pitches in a composition. They also recognize a melody as the same when it is played at very different tempi and can instantly notice changes in rhythm that would distort a composition. For all of these basic aspects of music, infant perception and cognition are generally similar to the ways in which adult listeners process music.
Asking About the Developmental Origins of Music
The discovery of musical abilities in infants raises the question of their time of origin. At what age do these types of abilities first appear? This query is related to the long-standing issue of whether infants remember their birth or even their in utero experiences. In seeking answers, one finds reports that seem no more credible than the story of the mice and their navigational use of dried cow pies. For example, there are collections of anecdotes which claim that people have detailed memories of birth or even in utero experiences. The reliability of these stories has been claimed on the basis either of hypnosis or that similar accounts of the birth are given by parents and children, although the parents claim never to have given children details of their birth. A little girl remembered that her parents argued about her name in the delivery room. A little boy delivered by Caesarian section recalled that it was "funny" when the wall of the uterus opened and the light came in. If these stories are true, then the newborn is able to understand strained social interactions and the detailed nature of conversations at birth and it also has a fine sense of humor. But as such high level cognitive abilities require months or years of development, these stories smell a bit like the cow pies appropriated by the mice for their cruise. Memories of early childhood are notoriously unreliable. That one can be absolutely certain about an early experience but be absolutely wrong about it is well-established.
So if we cannot rely upon personal recollections and anecdotal stories, how is it possible to know whether or not the newborn child, or the fetus in particular, has musical competencies? How can we try to find the beginnings of music?
We have to answer four questions, objectively. First, after conception how long does it take until the fetus can actually hear? Second, do musical sounds from the outside world reach the ears of the fetus? Third, what are the in utero responses to sound, particularly music. Fourth, what are the postnatal effects of in utero musical stimulation?
Prenatal Behavior
Regarding the beginning of hearing, the ear starts to develop only a few weeks after conception. However, the auditory system of the brain really doesn't function well, if at all, before about the 26th week, that is at the beginning of the last trimester of pregnancy. As to the second question, sound does reach the in utero ear, but it is greatly distorted because liquid and tissue surround the fetus. There is relatively little effect on sounds below about middle C on the piano, but an increasing reduction in sound levels with higher notes. As most instruments have harmonics about this frequency, there is a change in timbre. Those instruments having mainly high notes are affected most, such as the trumpet. On the other hand, melody and rhythm are not much altered. In fact, in utero recordings of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony yielded a clearly identifiable sound image. Thus, while sounds are greatly altered as they pass from the outside world to the ear of the fetus, there is more than sufficient musical stimulation to be heard in the womb.
What are the responses to music before birth? They consist mainly of body movements and changes in heart rate. Most sounds cause a short-lasting slowing of heart rate, as part of a "What is it?" response. Very loud sounds produce increases in heart rate, often with a startle response. Not only do sounds produce movement and changes in heart rate, but also there is evidence of pre-natal learning. Perhaps the simplest form of learning is habituation, which is learning to stop paying attention to repeated sounds that become boring. If a novel stimulus is substituted, infants will respond to it, showing they noticed the change. During the last trimester of pregnancy, the fetus is clearly capable of habituating to a repeated stimulus applied to the mother's abdomen, and also responding again when the stimulus is changed.
More complex learning can also occur before birth. In one study, the abdomen received a gentle vibratory stimulus that did not itself produce fetal responses; this was followed by a loud sound that did provoke movement. After several paired presentations, the subjects responded to the gentle vibration, showing that they anticipated receiving the loud sound. That this basic type of association can be learned before birth suggests considerable capacity of the fetus to acquire information and remember events.
From Womb to Room
This brings us to the fourth question, the postnatal effects of prenatal music. While one cannot determine all of the effects of prenatal music on the fetus, because of the very limited measures of behavior, the assessment of behavior after birth does allow us to draw conclusions about prenatal effects. Two types of postnatal assessments have been made: the rate of behavioral development and the degree of prenatal learning as measured by postnatal memory.
Some studies suggest that prenatal exposure to music facilitates infant development, and thus might one day serve to alleviate or remediate certain developmental delays in some children. Panthuraampthorn and his colleagues enlisted expectant mothers in a stimulation regimen that included music, rocking and patting the abdomen from 28 - 36 weeks of gestational age. They stated that large proportions of infants showed early development of the ability to orient toward their mother's voice. However the role of music itself is unclear because of the use of other stimuli and the findings themselves may not be significant due to the lack of a control comparison group. However Blum used a prenatal program (Leonardo 180) consisting of various types of music. He reported facilitated development in orienting to sound, babbling, visual tracking and motor control. Although there was no control group lacking music, the author did show that the behaviors exceeded population norms.
LaFuente did include a control group in her study of the effects of music on the rate of postnatal development. Beginning the 28th - 30th weeks, mothers played tapes of basic elements of music, progressing over weeks from a three note major chord through more complex chords, for a total of 50-90 hours across subjects. During infancy the music group exhibited significantly more rapid development of many behaviors, including babbling, visual tracking, eye-hand coordination, exploring objects with the mouth, facial imitation, general motor coordination and ability to hold the bottle with both hands.
All of these findings are mutually consistent and certainly point to the potential importance of prenatal music on development. However it must be realized that the results consist mainly of the mothers’ judgements and therefore unconscious bias cannot be absolutely ruled out. Future studies in which a neutral researcher, who does not know whether a child was in the experimental or control group, would solve this problem.
Lastly, we take up the issue of whether there is prenatal learning of music. Although few studies have been performed, they agree not only that music can be learned in utero but that it can also be remembered after birth. For example, one study reported that one-week-old infants prefer the lullaby sung by their mothers during pregnancy. Another investigation found that the prenatal lullaby had a greater soothing effect than a control song. There is also a report that maternal involvement in a prenatal music program increases bonding between mothers and their infants, although the basis for this effect is presently obscure.
In a related but more extensive investigation, Peter Hepper of Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, studied prenatal and postnatal responses to music, specifically the theme tunes of popular television shows viewed by their mothers. It was estimated that the mothers in the TV group watched a show, the "Neighbors", 360 times during pregnancy. When tested 2-4 days after birth, the music group of infants showed a significant decrease in heart rate to the theme song from the show compared to a control group. To determine if the music learning was highly specific, a follow-up experiment used a different piece of music to which the mothers and fetuses had never been exposed. The neonates did not respond to this song. Moreover, another group exhibited no responses to the song played backwards. Both results demonstrate that fetal learning of and memory for music are extremely specific.
To determine the gestational age of learning, Hepper first studied fetuses near term, 36-37 weeks of age. Repeated exposure to the selected piece of music resulted in subsequent in utero movement responses to that composition, compared to controls. However, no such learning could be found in fetuses of 29-30 weeks gestational age. Here then, we have very direct evidence of the origin of prenatal musical learning. Recall that the auditory system starts to be functional at about week 26. Thus, it seems clear that the ability to learn and remember music requires much additional development, at least beyond week 30.
In conclusion, study of the developmental origins of human mental and behavioral capabilities and in the prenatal environment within which they emerge is growing rapidly. This essay concerns music only. Systematic and objective investigations point increasingly to an important role for music in human prenatal development. As with all emerging areas of investigation, these initial studies can only hint at the wealth of information yet to be uncovered. Similarly, the overall implications of the unexpectedly early origins of musical competence can only be dimly glimpsed at this early stage of inquiry. But among these are reappraisals of human nature, grandiose as that may seem. We do need to fully know ourselves, but we don't yet.
in "MuSICA, The Music &Science Information Computer Archive", Norman M. Weinberger
"The Importance of Prenatal Sound and Music "
Introduction
Music has played an important role in different cultures since time immemorial. It has profoundly affected human beings in their physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well being. But only in this century has music begun to attract scientific attention. The research at the University of California in Irvine has provided some information about the effect of Mozart on the spatial and mathematical intelligence of children. Recently, an article in the Los Angeles Times newspaper (11/9/98) reported neurobiological research to the effect that "undeniably, there is a biology of music." Music is destined to play a more active role in the future of medicine. The following ideas illustrate how music affects our early development.
The importance of prenatal music was born in my awareness over twenty years ago when I was expecting my youngest son. Through my communication with him telepathically and through his delay in arrival I was able to attend a music conference that was very important to me at that time. The doctor thought it would be dangerous for me to participate in something very active aside from the fact that he was due that week, and being the second child, he surely would arrive early if not on time. Well, our son was born the day after I attended this stimulating week of singing and gentle movement.
Already at that time I observed that lullabies were relegated to the past: young mothers no longer knew this folk song tradition. Michel Odent, M.D., believes that women have a profound need to sing to their babies but that the medicalization of birth has upset this process. In the past, women all over the world have sung lullabies to their babies. These were very important because as we now know the fetus is having first language lessons in the womb. The inflections of the mother tongue are conveyed not only through speech but most importantly through song. The singing voice has a richer frequency range than speech. In fact, studies in other disciplines such as linguistics and musicology (e.g., David Whitwell, 1993) point out that there was a time when speech was song and therefore singing is the older of the two. Babies born of deaf mothers miss these important first lessons in language development. French pioneer Dr. Alfred Tomatis mentions being intrigued by the fact that song birds hatched by silent foster mothers can't sing. What the baby learns in utero are the intonational patterns of sound and the frequencies of a language in his/her particular culture. Frequency is the level of pitch measured in Hertz (Hz.) This range varies between 16 to 20,000 Hz. There is very little distortion of the mother's voice as heard by the fetus whereas other external voices sound more muffled, especially in the higher frequencies. According to Rubel (1984), the fetus is responsive first to lower frequencies and then to higher ones.
Verny and others have noted that babies have a preference for stories, rhymes, and poems first heard in the womb. When the mother reads out loud, the sound is received by her baby in part via bone conduction. Dr. Henry Truby, Emeritus Professor of Pediatrics and Linguistics at the University of Miami, points out that after the sixth month, the fetus moves in rhythm to the mother's speech and that spectrographs of the first cry of an abortus at 28 weeks could be matched with his mothers. The elements of music, namely tonal pitch, timbre, intensity and rhythm, are also elements used in speaking a language. For this reason, music prepares the ear, body and brain to listen to, integrate and produce language sounds. Music can thus be considered a pre-linguistic language which is nourishing and stimulating to the whole human being, affecting body, emotions, intellect, and developing an internal sense of beauty, sustaining and awakening the qualities in us that are wordless and otherwise inexpressible.
The research of Polverini-Rey (1992) seems to indicate that prenates exposed to lullabies in utero were calmed by the stimulus. The famous British violinist Yehudi Menuhin believes that his own musical talent was partly due to the fact that his parents were always singing and playing music before he was born.
The Sound Environment of the Womb
The sound environment of the womb is very rich. There are various interpretations as to the noise level, ranging between 30 to 96 dB. (decibel being a measure of sound intensity or loudness). A whisper can register 30 dB., a normal conversation is about 60 dB. and rush hour traffic can average about 70 dB. On the other hand, shouted conversations and motorcycles reach about 100 dB. Rock music has been measured as 115 dB. and the pain threshold begins at 125 dB. Yet, recent research with hydrophones have revealed that the womb is a "relatively quiet place" (Deliege and Sloboda, 1996), something comparable to what we experience in our environment between 50 and 60 dB.
Uterine sounds form a "sound carpet" over which the mother's voice in particular appears very distinct and which the prenate gives special attention because it is so different from its own amniotic environment. These sounds are of major importance because they establishes the first patterns of communication and bonding. Some researchers have discovered that newborns become calmer and more self-regulated when exposed to intrauterine sound (Murooka et. al 1976; DeCasper 1983; Rossner 1979). The soothing sounds of the ocean and water are probably reminiscent of the fluid environment in which we began life. Tomatis suggests that the maternal heart beat, respiration and intestinal gurgling, all form the source for our collective attraction to the sound of surf and may have to do with our inborn sense of rhythm. Prenatal sounds form an important developmental component in prenatal life because they provide a foundation for later learning and behavior. With fetal sound stimulation the brain functions at a higher level of organization.
The ear first appears in the 3rd week of gestation and it becomes functional by the 16th week. The fetus begins active listening by the 24th week. We know from ultrasound observations that the fetus hears and responds to a sound pulse starting about 16 weeks of age (Shahidullah & Hepper, 1992); this is even before the ear construction is complete. The cochlear structures of the ear appear to function by the 20th week and mature synapses have been found between the 24th and 28th weeks (Pujol et al. 1991). For this reason most formal programs of prenatal stimulation are usually designed to begin during the third trimester. The sense of hearing is probably the most developed of all the senses before birth.
Four-month-old fetuses can respond in very specific ways to sound; if exposed to loud music, and their heart beat will accelerate. A Japanese study of pregnant women living near the Osaka airport had smaller babies and an inflated incidence of prematurity-arguably related to the environment of incessant loud noise. Chronic noise can also be associated with birth defects (Szmeja et al. 1979). I recently received a report from a mother who was in her 7th month of pregnancy when she visited the zoo. In the lion's enclosure, the animals were in process of being fed. The roar of one lion would set off another lion and the sound was so intense she had to leave the scene as the fetus reacted with a strong kick and left her feeling ill. Many years later, when the child was 7 years of age, it was found that he had a hearing deficiency in the lower-middle range. This child also reacts with fear when viewing TV programs of lions and related animals. There are numerous reports about mothers having to leave war movies and concerts because the auditory stimulus caused the fetus to become hyperactive.
Alfred Tomatis notes that the ear is "the Rome of the body" because almost all cranial nerves lead to it and therefore it is considered our most primary sense organ. Embryonically, according to him, the skin is differentiated ear, and we listen with our whole body.
In order to better understand the role of music in its elements of rhythm and melody, we must briefly clarify the two parts of the inner ear. These are the vestibular system and the cochlea. The vestibular system controls balance and body movements, including the integration of movements which make up the rhythm of music-making the vestibular system the more archaic. And according to Paul Madaule (1984)"it is in fact because of the vestibular system that music seems to have an impact on the body." At around 4 ½ to 6 weeks gestational age the vestibular and the cochlear systems become differentiated, at 7 ½ the auditory ossicles start to grow, and at 4 ½ months the ear of the fetus is already adult-like in shape and size.
The cochlear system enables the transformation of acoustic vibrations into nervous influx, thus allowing the perception of melodies which carry higher frequencies. Knowing this, one can have a better understanding of the intimate relationship and unity of rhythm and melody. George Gershwin expressed this nicely: "Music sets up a certain vibration which unquestionably results in a physical reaction." With this in mind, we should choose for early music stimulation melodies and rhythms that are simple.
Tomatis has a unique view of the function of the human ear going beyond what is traditionally assumed. He regards it as neither an instrument solely for hearing and listening, nor an organ for the maintenance of equilibrium and verticality. For him the ear is primarily a generator of energy for the brain, intended to give a cortical charge which is then distributed throughout the body "with the view to toning up the whole system and imparting greater dynamism to the human being" (Gilmor and Madaule, 1984, p. 6). Hence the importance of right sound stimulation which will lead to vocal expression, listening, and thinking. Sound, music and human development are intricately interwoven.
Clearly, the vestibular system progresses rapidly as seen by the active movement of the fetus in utero. As early as the first trimester, regular exercise patterns have been observed with ultra-sound: rolling, flexing, turning, etc. (Van Dongen & Goudie, 1980). The movements appear as graceful somersaults, flexing of the back and neck, turning the head, waving arms, kicking legs-- all self initiated and expressive in nature. When the baby moves in utero, the heartbeat accelerates. DeMause (1982) summarizes reactions of the second trimester as follows: "The fetus now floats peacefully, kicks, turns, sighs, grabs its umbilicus, gets excited at sudden noises, calms down when the mother talks quietly, and gets rocked back to sleep as she walks about."
The fetal heart is fully developed by the second trimester and its pulse rate oscillates between 120 to 160 beats per minute. Some think the distinctive rhythm of the mother's heart beat in utero is the basis and our attraction to drumming, rock rhythms, and the African tribal beat. Salk (1960), Murooka (1976), and De Casper (1983) provided evidence that newborns learned and remembered their mother's heart beat in utero. Ashley Montagu (1962) suggested that the universal appeal of music and the soothing effect of rhythmical sounds may be related to the feeling of well being assumed to exist in utero in relation to the mother's heartbeat. Salk (1960) showed that newborns in hospitals listening to heartbeat sounds gained weight at a faster rate. Likewise, breathing was deeper and more regular among these babies. According to W. Ernest Freud "rhythm itself provides a most reassuring 'cradle' because of its promise of repetition and continuity."
Sound and Learning in Utero
The powerful connection between sound/music and prenatal memory/learning have been revealed in formal experiments, parental observations, clinical records, and first person reports. Chamberlain (1998) using Howard Gardner's concept of multiple intelligences, has presented evidence for musical intelligence before birth. Peter Hepper (1991) discovered that prenates exposed to TV soap opera music during pregnancy responded with focused and rapt attention to this music after birth-evidence of long-term memory. On hearing the music after birth, these newborns had a significant decrease in heart rate and movements, and shifted into a more alert state. Likewise, Shetler (1989) reported that 33% of fetal subjects in his study demonstrated contrasting reactions to tempo variations between faster and slower selections of music. This may be the earliest and most primitive musical response in utero.
The pioneering New Zealand fetologist, William Liley, found that from at least 25 weeks on, the unborn child would jump in rhythm with the timpanist's contribution to an orchestral performance. The research of Michele Clements (1977) in a London maternity hospital found that four to five month fetuses were soothed by Vivaldi and Mozart but disturbed by loud passages of Beethoven, Brahms and Rock. Newborns have shown a preference for a melody their mother sang in utero rather than a new song sung by their mother (Satt, 1987). Babies during the third trimester in utero respond to vibroacoustic as well as air-coupled acoustic sounds, indicative of functional hearing. A study by Gelman et al. (1982) determined that a 2000 Hz. stimulus elicited a significant increase in fetal movements, a finding which supported the earlier study by Johnsson et al. (1964). From 26 weeks to term, fetuses have shown fetal heart accelerations in response to vibroacoustic stimuli. Consistent startle responses to vibroacoustic stimuli were also recorded during this period of development. Behavioral reactions included arm movements, leg extensions, and head aversions (Birnholz and Benacerraf, 1983). Yawning activity was observed after the conclusion of stimuli. Research by Luz et al. (1980 and 1985) has found that the normal fetus responds to external acoustic stimulation during labor in childbirth. These included startle responses to the onset of a brief stimulus.
New evidence of cognitive development in the prenatal era is presented by William Sallenbach (1994) who made in-depth and systematic observations of his own daughter's behavior from weeks 32 to 34 in utero. (The full report of his findings is available on this website in Life Before Birth/Early Parenting) Until recently, most research on early learning processes has been in the area of habituation (Querleu et al., 1981), conditioning (Van de Carr, 1988) or imprinting sequences (Salk, 1962). However, Sallenbach observed that in the last trimester of pregnancy, the prenate's learning state shows movement from abstraction and generalization to one of increased specificity and differentiation. During a bonding session using music, the prenate was observed moving her hands gently. In a special musical arrangement, where dissonance was included, the subject's reactions were more rhythmic with rolling movements. Similarly, in prenatal music classes, Sister Lorna Zemke has found that the fetus will respond rhythmically to rhythms tapped on the mother's belly.
From what research is telling us, we may presume that prenates would prefer to hear lullabies sung by their mothers, or selected slow passages of Baroque music such as Vivaldi, Telemann, and Handel which have a tempo resembling our own heart beat at rest. Recent research has shown that four month old infants demonstrate an innate preference for music that is consonant rather than dissonant (Zentner and Kagan, 1998). However, this allows great latitude in the selection of music which babies and their mothers might like to hear. Our ultimate objective, of course is to help create not a musical genius but a person well integrated in his physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual self.
in "Life before Birth", Giselle E. Whitwell
"Why blind babies become musical geniuses"
Science has finally caught up with something that musicians and piano tuners have known for years.
Canadian researchers have found that infants who go blind at a very young age develop better musical abilities than those who lose their sight later in life or retain full vision. They say the brains of people who lose their sight in infancy are "re-organised" early in life to better process sounds. The University of Montreal and McGill University researchers publish their findings in today's issue of the journal Nature. It has long been known that blind people are far better than their sighted counterparts at orientating themselves by sound. And researchers have shown that blind people are better than others at recognising musical chords. But this latest research has found that blind people are also up to 10 times better at discerning pitch changes than the sighted, but only when they went blind before the age of two. "This research confirms that blind people are indeed better at pitch discrimination than normal, sighted people," said lead researcher Professor Pascal Belin. "It is well known that you have great musicians that are blind, and a lot of piano tuners are blind. But until this study there was no quantifiable evidence to demonstrate that blind people were indeed better."
But Belin's team found there was no difference in the ability to detect changes in pitch between sighted people and those who went blind in late infancy. "We found that the superiority was correlated with the age of blindness," Belin said. "Only the blind subjects who had become blind before the age of two had a clearly superior performance. Late blind subjects, people who became blind after the age of five, were no different from the control subjects." The research attributed the clear differences in performance to brain plasticity, the formative period when the infant brain is akin to a sponge and soaking up all sorts of stimuli. Belin said his research suggested that deprived of input, the section of the brain that would have processed images was reassigned to enhance other sectors. "When these people became blind, the part of their brain that would have been used to process visual information reorganises to take over other functions, and in particular auditory information," Belin said. "And the earlier this reorganisation takes place, the more efficient it is." in "ABC Science Online", Jeremy Lovell
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