Babies born to dance, study shows

16/03/2010

Babies are more naturally in tune with musical beats than they are with the human voice, research by the University of York suggests.
The children in the study, aged between five months and two years, moved their bodies to music, finding the rhythm and tempo more engaging than speech.
Psychologist Marcel Zentner, who led the team, said: "Our research suggests that it is the beat rather than other features of the music, such as the melody, that produces the response in infants.
"We also found that the better the children were able to synchronise their movements with the music the more they smiled.
"It remains to be understood why humans have developed this particular predisposition. One possibility is that it was a target of natural selection for music or that it has evolved for some other function that just happens to be relevant for music processing."
Infants listened to a variety of stimulating sounds including classical music, rhythmic beats and speech.
Their spontaneous movements were recorded by video and 3D motion-capture technology so they could be compared.
Professional ballet dancers were employed by the scientists to analyse the extent to which babies matched their movement to music.
The research is published in the online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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