Infants Born to Dance

Research shows, infants respond to rhythm and tempo of the music and it was more interesting than words. Findings, based on studies in infants aged between five months and two years, show the baby may be born with a tendency to move rhythmically in response to the music.

The study was conducted by Marcel Zentner, from the University of York's Department of Psychology, and Tuomas Eerola, from the Finnish Center of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Music Research at the University of Jyvaskyla. Research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

In this study, infants exposed to a variety of audio stimuli, including classical music, rhythmic beats and words. Their spontaneous movements recorded by video and image capture technology and compared three dimenasi at all the different stimuli. This research also involves a professional ballet dancer in order to analyze the extent to which infants adjust their movements to music.

"Our research shows that the rhythm produced in reaction to the baby instead of other forms of music such as melody. We also found that the better a child can synchronize movement with music, the more they smiled broadly. But still have to understand why humans have developed this particular trend," Zentner .

One possibility is that it is the target of natural selection for music or it has been developed for several other functions that had just happened to line the processional music, "he said.