Science and Health

Babies inborn to response to music rhythms: study

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-03-16 13:44

BEIJING - Infants are inborn to move rhythmically in response to music, media reports said quoting a new study Monday.

Babies inborn to response to music rhythms: study

File photo shows babies sit in tummy tubs filled with water to cool down after a baby massage class held for young mothers in IJmuiden March 24, 2009. Infants are inborn to move rhythmically in response to music, media reports said quoting a new study Monday. [Agencies]

Psychologist Marcel Zentner, who led the University of York team, said: "Our research suggests that it is the beat rather than other features of the music, such as the melody, that produces the response in infants."

"We also found that the better the children were able to synchronise their movements with the music the more they smiled."

The findings, based on a study of 120 infants aged from five months to two years, suggest that humans may be born with a nature to move rhythmically in response to music.

During the experiments, infants listened to a variety of stimulating sounds including classical music, rhythmic beats and speech. The researchers found the babies moved their arms, hands, legs, feet, torsos and heads in response to the music.

Though the ability seems to be natural in human, the researchers aren't sure why it evolved.

"It remains to be understood why humans have developed this particular predisposition," Zentner said. "One possibility is that it was a target of natural selection for music or that it has evolved for some other function that just happens to be relevant for music processing."