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Related Experiment Video

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Experience is Instrumental in Tuning a Link Between Language and Cognition: Evidence from 6- to 7- Month-Old Infants' Object Categorization

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Shared musical knowledge in 11-month-old infants.

Samuel A Mehr^1,2, Elizabeth S Spelke²

¹Graduate School of Education, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.

Developmental Science

|February 24, 2017

Summary

Infants learn social information from music. Eleven-month-olds prefer objects from singers of familiar songs, with parental singing uniquely influencing their attention, supporting music

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Area of Science:

Developmental Psychology
Music Cognition
Infant Social Development

Background:

Infants perceive music as a source of social information.
Previous research indicates 5-month-olds selectively attend to familiar songs sung by parents.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate how 11-month-old infants use music to infer social information about unfamiliar individuals.
To examine the impact of learning songs from parents versus toys on infants' social preferences.

Main Methods:

64 eleven-month-old infants were exposed to novel songs learned from a parent singing or a toy.
Infants later viewed silent individuals presenting objects, with preferences assessed based on song familiarity.
Visual attention to objects was measured in relation to song exposure.

Main Results:

Infants in both conditions preferred objects associated with the familiar song.
Infants' visual attention to the object was predicted by song exposure only when the song was learned from a parent.
Parental singing uniquely influenced infants' responses to new singers.

Conclusions:

Eleven-month-olds derive social information from songs regardless of learning source (parent or toy).
Parental singing has distinct effects on infants' social responses to music sharers.
Findings support the hypothesis that infants attribute social meaning to music.