Some infants can identify differences in musical tones at six months

Summary: Approximately 30% of six-month-old babies can discriminate between differences in musical tones.

Source: York University

There’s a common belief that musicians are born with a natural ability to play music, while most of us have to work twice as hard to hear the difference between musical notes. Now, new research from neuroscientists at York University suggests the capacity to hear the highs and lows, also known as the major and minor notes in music, may come before you take a single lesson; you may actually be born with it.

The study, published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, examined the capacity of six-month-old infants to discriminate between a major and a minor musical tone sequence with a unique method that uses eye movements and a visual stimulus.

Previous research with adults has shown that approximately 30 percent of adults can discriminate this difference but 70 percent cannot, irrespective of musical training. Researchers found that six-month-old infants show exactly the same breakdown as adults: approximately 30 percent of them could discriminate the difference and 70 percent could not.

“At six months, it’s highly unlikely that any of these infants have had any formal training in music,” says Scott Adler, associate professor, Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Health and member of Vision: Science to Applications (VISTA) Program at the Centre for Vision Research. “Yes, parents play music for children. All children in western civilization hear music, but they don’t get that specific training in music. This breakdown, therefore, is due to some inborn mechanism.”

Adler’s team at York collaborated on the study with Professor Charles Chubb, of the University of California at Irvine, whose earlier research with adults and adolescents found there are two populations of individuals: some who can discriminate between the major and minor tones and most who cannot discriminate. In adults, the capacity to discriminate between major and minor was shown not to be due to their level of musical training or their level of music exposure.

The new study extends the existence of those different populations down to infants, suggesting that the source of this difference might be genetic – a capacity that we are born with.

This capacity would have implications for developing appreciation of the emotional content of music, because it’s the major and minor notes that give music their emotion.

This shows a baby banging a drum
Researchers found that six-month-old infants show exactly the same breakdown as adults: approximately 30 per cent of them could discriminate the difference and 70 per cent could not. Image is in the public domain.

In the study, researchers conducted trials with 30 six-month-old infants in which they heard a tone-scramble, a series of notes whose quality (major vs. minor) signaled the location (right vs. left) where a subsequent picture (target) would appear. The babies were tasked with determining which side to look when they heard a major or a minor sound. Once they heard a series of notes, a picture would either appear on the right or the left depending on whether it was a major or minor tone scramble. In a second experiment, tone-scrambles did not reliably predict the location of subsequent pictures.

“What we measured over time was how the infants learned the association between which tone they heard and where the picture is going to show up. If they can tell the difference in the tone, over time, when they hear the major notes for example, they’ll make an eye movement to the location for the picture even before the picture appears because they can predict this. This is what we are measuring,” says Adler.

The researchers found that for 33 percent or one-third of infants, these anticipatory eye movements predicted the picture location with near perfect accuracy; for the other 67 percent, they were unrelated to the picture location.


Credit: York University.

These results may also have implications for language development, which relies on some of the same mechanisms and auditory content as music, says Adler.

“There is a connection between music, music processing and mathematical abilities, as well as language, so whether these things connect up to those abilities is an unknown. However, when people talk to babies they change the intonation of their voice and the pitch of their voice so they’re changing from major to minor. That is actually an important component for babies to learn language. If you don’t have the capacity it might affect that ability in learning language.”

Funding: This research was supported by Grant No. R03-MH085994-01A1 from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Hallward Fund of the Toronto Foundation awarded to S.A.A. An earlier version of these data was presented at the meeting of the International Congress for Infant Studies in Philadelphia, PA, in July 2018.

About this neuroscience research article

Source:
York University
Media Contacts:
Anjum Nayyar – York University
Image Source:
The image is in the public domain.

Original Research: Closed access
“Sensitivity to major versus minor musical modes is bimodally distributed in young infants”. by Scott Adler et al.
Journal of Acoustical Society of America doi:10.1121/10.0001349

Abstract

Sensitivity to major versus minor musical modes is bimodally distributed in young infants

The difference between major and minor scales plays a central role in Western music. However, recent research using random tone sequences (“tone-scrambles”) has revealed a dramatically bimodal distribution in sensitivity to this difference: 30% of listeners are near perfect in classifying major versus minor tone-scrambles; the other 70% perform near chance. Here, whether or not infants show this same pattern is investigated. The anticipatory eye-movements of thirty 6-month-old infants were monitored during trials in which the infants heard a tone-scramble whose quality (major versus minor) signalled the location (right versus left) where a subsequent visual stimulus (the target) would appear. For 33% of infants, these anticipatory eye-movements predicted target location with near perfect accuracy; for the other 67%, the anticipatory eye-movements were unrelated to the target location. In conclusion, six-month-old infants show the same distribution as adults in sensitivity to the difference between major versus minor tone-scrambles.

Feel Free To Share This Neuroscience News.

Join our Newsletter
I agree to have my personal information transferred to AWeber for Neuroscience Newsletter ( more information )
Sign up to receive our recent neuroscience headlines and summaries sent to your email once a day, totally free.
We hate spam and only use your email to contact you about newsletters. You can cancel your subscription any time.