Infants prefer the musical meter of their own culture: a cross-cultural comparison - PubMed (original) (raw)
Comparative Study
doi: 10.1037/a0017555.
Affiliations
- PMID: 20053025
- DOI: 10.1037/a0017555
Comparative Study
Infants prefer the musical meter of their own culture: a cross-cultural comparison
Gaye Soley et al. Dev Psychol. 2010 Jan.
Abstract
Infants prefer native structures such as familiar faces and languages. Music is a universal human activity containing structures that vary cross-culturally. For example, Western music has temporally regular metric structures, whereas music of the Balkans (e.g., Bulgaria, Macedonia, Turkey) can have both regular and irregular structures. We presented 4- to 8-month-old American and Turkish infants with contrasting melodies to determine whether cultural background would influence their preferences for musical meter. In Experiment 1, American infants preferred Western over Balkan meter, whereas Turkish infants, who were familiar with both Western and Balkan meters, exhibited no preference. Experiments 2 and 3 presented infants with either a Western or Balkan meter paired with an arbitrary rhythm with complex ratios not common to any musical culture. Both Turkish and American infants preferred Western and Balkan meter to an arbitrary meter. Infants' musical preferences appear to be driven by culture-specific experience and a culture-general preference for simplicity.
Copyright 2009 APA, all rights reserved.
Similar articles
- Infants use meter to categorize rhythms and melodies: implications for musical structure learning.
Hannon EE, Johnson SP. Hannon EE, et al. Cogn Psychol. 2005 Jun;50(4):354-77. doi: 10.1016/j.cogpsych.2004.09.003. Epub 2004 Nov 25. Cogn Psychol. 2005. PMID: 15893524 Clinical Trial. - Constraints on infants' musical rhythm perception: effects of interval ratio complexity and enculturation.
Hannon EE, Soley G, Levine RS. Hannon EE, et al. Dev Sci. 2011 Jul;14(4):865-72. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2011.01036.x. Epub 2011 Apr 4. Dev Sci. 2011. PMID: 21676105 - Culture-general and culture-specific factors in the discrimination of melodies.
Schellenberg EG, Trehub SE. Schellenberg EG, et al. J Exp Child Psychol. 1999 Oct;74(2):107-27. doi: 10.1006/jecp.1999.2511. J Exp Child Psychol. 1999. PMID: 10479397 - Infant music perception: domain-general or domain-specific mechanisms?
Trehub SE, Hannon EE. Trehub SE, et al. Cognition. 2006 May;100(1):73-99. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2005.11.006. Epub 2005 Dec 27. Cognition. 2006. PMID: 16380107 Review. - The developmental origins of musicality.
Trehub SE. Trehub SE. Nat Neurosci. 2003 Jul;6(7):669-73. doi: 10.1038/nn1084. Nat Neurosci. 2003. PMID: 12830157 Review.
Cited by
- Beyond the ears: A review exploring the interconnected brain behind the hierarchical memory of music.
Ren Y, Brown TI. Ren Y, et al. Psychon Bull Rev. 2024 Apr;31(2):507-530. doi: 10.3758/s13423-023-02376-1. Epub 2023 Sep 18. Psychon Bull Rev. 2024. PMID: 37723336 Review. - A Dynamical, Radically Embodied, and Ecological Theory of Rhythm Development.
Tichko P, Kim JC, Large EW. Tichko P, et al. Front Psychol. 2022 Feb 24;13:653696. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.653696. eCollection 2022. Front Psychol. 2022. PMID: 35282203 Free PMC article. Review. - Music to My Ears_:_ Neural modularity and flexibility differ in response to real-world music stimuli.
Bonomo ME, Brandt AK, Frazier JT, Karmonik C. Bonomo ME, et al. IBRO Neurosci Rep. 2022 Jan 3;12:98-107. doi: 10.1016/j.ibneur.2021.12.007. eCollection 2022 Jun. IBRO Neurosci Rep. 2022. PMID: 35106517 Free PMC article. - Exploratory expertise and the dual intentionality of music-making.
Høffding S, Schiavio A. Høffding S, et al. Phenomenol Cogn Sci. 2021;20(5):811-829. doi: 10.1007/s11097-019-09626-5. Epub 2019 Jun 18. Phenomenol Cogn Sci. 2021. PMID: 34759788 Free PMC article. - Everyday music in infancy.
Mendoza JK, Fausey CM. Mendoza JK, et al. Dev Sci. 2021 Nov;24(6):e13122. doi: 10.1111/desc.13122. Epub 2021 Jun 25. Dev Sci. 2021. PMID: 34170059 Free PMC article.