Rhythmic structure facilitates learning from auditory input in newborn infants

Emma Suppanen,Minna Huotilainen,Sari Ylinen

doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2019.101346

Abstract

Rhythm and metrical regularities are fundamental properties of music and poetry - and all of those are used in the interaction between infants and their parents. Music and rhythm perception have been shown to support auditory and language skills. Here we compare newborn infants’ learning from a song, a nursery rhyme, and normal speech for the first time in the same study. Infants’ electrophysiological brain responses revealed that the nursery rhyme condition facilitated learning from auditory input, and thus led to successful detection of deviations. These findings suggest that coincidence of prosodic cue patterns and to-be-learned items is more important than the format of the input. Overall, the present results support the view that rhythm is likely to create a template for future events, which allows auditory system to predict prospective input and thus facilitates language development.

Highlights

Across cultures, caregivers and their infants use music to interact: for example, singing play songs and lullabies, reciting nursery rhymes, and rocking infants in time with music (Fernald & Kuhl, 1987; Obermeier et al, 2013; Papousek, 1996; Shannon, 2006; Trehub & Schellenberg, 1995; Wallin et al, 2001)
Significant prediction error responses to word changes were found in newborns when deviations were presented within the nursery rhyme [40–100 ms: t(20) = −3.32, p = .01; 130–190 ms: t(20) = −2.35, p = .03] (Table 7)
The current study examined whether the facilitative effect of music and rhythm on learning from auditory input can be observed in newborn infants

Summary

Introduction

Caregivers and their infants use music to interact: for example, singing play songs and lullabies, reciting nursery rhymes, and rocking infants in time with music (Fernald & Kuhl, 1987; Obermeier et al, 2013; Papousek, 1996; Shannon, 2006; Trehub & Schellenberg, 1995; Wallin et al, 2001). Many studies have shown the benefits of both formal and informal musical activities to auditory, linguistic and literacy skills in children Music training allows children to detect small pitch changes (Besson, Schön, Moreno, Santos, & Magne, 2007), and children’s music experience has been found to promote verbal memory (Ho, Cheung, & Chan, 2003), reading skills (Anvari, Trainor, Woodside, & Levy, 2002; Corrigall & Trainor, 2011), vocabulary (Forgeard, Winner, Norton, & Schlaug, 2008; Linnavalli et al, 2018), phoneme awareness (Anvari et al, 2002), and detection of prosody (Magne, Schön, & Besson, 2006). Musical activities seem to modify the phase of attention fluctuations (Jones, 1976) to

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Conclusion