Authors
Marcel Zentner, Tuomas Eerola
Publication date
2010/3/30
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Volume
107
Issue
13
Pages
5768-5773
Publisher
National Academy of Sciences
Description
Humans have a unique ability to coordinate their motor movements to an external auditory stimulus, as in music-induced foot tapping or dancing. This behavior currently engages the attention of scholars across a number of disciplines. However, very little is known about its earliest manifestations. The aim of the current research was to examine whether preverbal infants engage in rhythmic behavior to music. To this end, we carried out two experiments in which we tested 120 infants (aged 5–24 months). Infants were exposed to various excerpts of musical and rhythmic stimuli, including isochronous drumbeats. Control stimuli consisted of adult- and infant-directed speech. Infants’ rhythmic movements were assessed by multiple methods involving manual coding from video excerpts and innovative 3D motion-capture technology. The results show that (i) infants engage in significantly more rhythmic movement to music …
Total citations
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Scholar articles
M Zentner, T Eerola - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2010