Study shows newborn babies can perceive ‘beat’ in music

London: Your newborn baby is well able to perceive the beat in the nursery rhymes that you play, confirmed a new research.

The study, carried out by a team of scientists from the University of Amsterdam and the HUN-REN Research Center for Natural Sciences (TTK) in Hungary, shows that this ability to recognise a beat is not simply due to the statistical learning ability of newborns, but that beat perception is actually a separate cognitive mechanism that is already active at birth.

"There is still a lot we don't know about how newborn babies perceive, remember and process music," said Henkjan Honing, Professor of Music Cognition at the University of Amsterdam.

"But we found clear indications that babies of just a few days old have the ability to hear a regular pulse in music -- the beat -- a characteristic that is considered essential for making and appreciating music."

For the study, published in the journal Cognition, the team conducted an experiment with 27 newborn babies. Researchers manipulated the timing of drum rhythms to see whether babies make a distinction between learning the order of sounds in a drum rhythm (statistical learning) and being able to recognise a beat (beat-induction).

The babies were presented with two versions of one drum rhythm through headphones. In the first version, the timing was isochronous: the distance between the sounds was always the same. This allows you to hear a pulse or beat in the rhythm. In the other version, the same drum pattern was presented, but with random timing (jittered).

As a result, beat perception was not possible, but the sequence of sounds could be learned. This allowed the researchers to distinguish between beat perception and statistical learning.

Because behavioural responses in newborn babies cannot be observed, the research was done with brain wave measurements (EEG) while the babies were sleeping. This way, the researchers were able to view the brain responses of the babies.

These responses showed that the babies heard the beat when the time interval between the beats was always the same. But when the researchers played the same pattern at irregular time intervals, the babies didn't hear a beat.

"This crucial difference confirms that being able to hear the beat is innate and not simply the result of learned sound sequences," said co-author Istvan Winkler, Professor at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Psychology at TTK.

"Our findings suggest that it is a specific skill of newborns and make clear how important baby and nursery rhymes are for the auditory development of young children. More insight into early perception is of great importance for learning more about infant cognition and the role that musical skills may play in early development," Winkler added.