New Research Suggests Babies Are Born to Dance

By Leader Staff. Published on 03/16/2010 - 9:24am

According to a new study, infants respond to the rhythm and tempo of music, and find it to be more engaging than speech. The findings are based on a study of infants aged between five months and two years old, and suggest that babies may be born with a predisposition to move rhythmically in response to music.

The study was conducted by Dr. Marcel Zentner of the University of York's Department of Psychology and Dr. Tuomas Eerola from the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Music Research at the University of Jyvaskyla. In the study, infants listened to a variety of audio stimuli which included classical music, rhythmic beats and speech.

The infants' spontaneous movements were recorded by video and #D motion-capture technology, which were then compared across the different stimuli. Researchers also enlisted the help of professional ballet dances to analyze the extent to which babies matched their movement to the music.

Speaking of the study, Dr. Zentner said:

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

It remains to be understood why humans have developed this particular predisposition. 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.

The study was partially funded by a grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation, and its findings were published in the March 15 edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Online Early Edition.

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Submitted by Joyful squirrel (not verified) on January 16, 2011 - 5:58am

#1

Oh, I saw a very nice video where small kids danced to music. It was so funnny. Here it is: http://www.tubestime.com/watch/sudden-infant-dance-syndrome . Really, every parent noticed that the child responds to music. Maybe the conclusions of the research are right.

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