You Are Reading the First 6 FREE Chapters (470 pages)
Mother Songs and Infant Prelingual Skills
Pre-lingual babies in all cultures can:
- Respond to "mother songs"—their mothers’ melodious, song-like vocalizing—to a much greater degree than their mothers’ speech vocalizing
- Recognize changes in a mother song melody
- Resolve tiny pitch differences (and small timing differences)
- Recognize the same melody even if sped up or slowed down
- Recognize the same melody when transposed to a different key
- Perceive diatonic tunes more easily than non-diatonic tunes
- Perceive consonant intervals more easily than dissonant intervals
- Adapt to the musical conventions of whatever society they’re born into
Culture modifies the expression of these predispositions, but the predispositions exist in the brain at birth (characteristic of adaptations).
Babies worldwide spontaneously initiate musical sound-play with their mothers and others. Young children are forever inventing games and rhythmic play. Adults do not teach them this stuff. In fact, children have difficulty separating rhythmic body movements from music and singing until age four or five. Next time you observe a preschooler having a musical experience, notice how he or she jumps around, claps and makes other rhythmic gestures.