Babies & Beats
Press Release: Newborn infants detect the beat in music (Dutch | Hugarian)
Researchers have found that newborn infants are able to detect the beat in music. The results support the theory that a sense for detecting a regular beat, termed ‘beat induction’, is innate or possibly learned already in the womb. Beat induction is probably fundamental to the origins of music, because it allows clapping or making music together, dancing to a rhythm, etc. István Winkler, Henkjan Honing and colleagues investigated beat induction in sleeping babies two or three days after birth.
Since it is not feasible to observe behavioral reactions in newborns, the researchers used scalp electrodes to measure electrical brain signals. The babies wore self-adhesive ear?couplers (see photo) through which a simple, regular rock rhythm was delivered, consisting of hi-hat, snare, and bass drum. Several variants of the basic rhythm were constructed by omitting strokes on non-significant positions of the rhythm. These variants were played to the infants, with a “deviant” segment, missing the downbeat, occasionally interspersed. Shortly after each deviant segment began, the babies’ brains produced an electrical response marking that they had expected to hear the downbeat but had not. This innate sense of rhythm is probably essential for bootstrapping verbal communication and music appreciation, the researchers say.
The research was conducted at the Institute for Psychology of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Cognitive Science Center Amsterdam at the University of Amsterdam within the EmCAP (Emergent Cognition through Active Perception) collaborative project funded by the European Commission’s 6th Framework Programme for ”Information Society Technologies” (contract no.: 013123).
Article #08-09035: “Newborn infants detect the beat in music,” by István Winkler, Gábor P. Háden, Olivia Ladinig, István Sziller, and Henkjan Honing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0809035106
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