Infant memory for musical experiences

Recent findings suggest that infants can remember words from stories over 2 week delays (Jusczyk, P. W., & Hohne, E. A. (1997). Infants' memory for spoken words. Science, 277, 1984–1986). Because music, like language, presents infants with a massively complex auditory learning task, it is p...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cognition 2000-10, Vol.77 (1), p.B15-B23
Main Authors: Saffran, Jenny R, Loman, Michelle M, Robertson, Rachel R.W
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological and medical sciences
Child development
Comparative Analysis
Developmental psychology
Familiarity
Female
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Infant
Infant Behavior
Infants
Learning
Listening
Long Term Memory
Male
Memory
Mental Recall
Music
Newborn. Infant
Novelty (Stimulus Dimension)
Performance Factors
Psychology, Child
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Recognition (Psychology)
Retention (Psychology)
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Summary:Recent findings suggest that infants can remember words from stories over 2 week delays (Jusczyk, P. W., & Hohne, E. A. (1997). Infants' memory for spoken words. Science, 277, 1984–1986). Because music, like language, presents infants with a massively complex auditory learning task, it is possible that infant memory for musical stimuli is equally powerful. Seven-month-old infants heard two Mozart sonata movements daily for 2 weeks. Following a 2 week retention interval, the infants were tested on passages of the familiarized music, and passages taken from similar but novel music. Results from two experiments suggest that the infants retained the familiarized music in long-term memory, and that their listening preferences were affected by the extent to which familiar passages were removed from the musical contexts within which they were originally learned.
ISSN:0010-0277
1873-7838
DOI:10.1016/S0010-0277(00)00095-0