One of the first senses you receive in the womb is sound; whether that be your mother’s voice or muffled talking and noise coming from outside the womb, your unborn infant can hear it. Plenty of studies have been conducted by researchers about what they can hear, respond to, and prefer, but what about newly born infants?
In the article, Neonatal Musicality: Do Newborns Detect Emotions in Music?, the goal of the study is to determine the emotional effects of various background music on neonates that are deemed healthy. This was examined through analyzing the baby’s’ movements frame by frame paired with their heart rate in two different experiments (one experiment for behavioral responses and the other on heart rate). Behavior that was recorded was yawning, sucking, arm stretching, arm flexion, finger movement, finger clench, finger stretch, smiling, leg flexion, leg stretch, toes curled, toes stretched, and eyes open, barely open, and closed. The emotions that were used in the study were happy and sad and songs were pulled from a various large collection of lullabies and children’s songs. A control (referred to as ‘baseline’ in the study) was also used that monitored the neonates’ responses with no music playing.
The study found that infants’ heart rate would decrease along with decreased their movement and forms of self-regulatory behavior while sad music there was stillness and longer leg stretches. There were no differences in heart rate examined while infants listened to sad music. Further discussion on this experiment goes deeper into why this may have occurred as well as other various aspects that may explain the results.
What is interesting is how this is how like how we respond to music. Later the study mentions that with happier music the infants were more likely to have stronger response and are noted to “absorb” the sad music. With how today’s society is, music is something we constantly are exposed to and listen to on an everyday basis. Next time you listen to music, think about how your child may be interacting and responding to music and how your responses, even close to your first day of life, are quite similar!
Read the full article here!
Mikayla Clemens
Research Assistant, UConn KIDS