People believe that musicians are born with their ability. While other people have to exert more effort into learning music, people who are born with it could know the difference between high and low notes.
Babies could identify major and minor notes
Researchers at York University found that even before musicians take music lessons, they are already able to identify major and minor notes at a young age. In the study, they examined if six-month-old babies could determine major from minor musical tone sequences. The team used a unique method that makes use of eye movements and a visual stimulus.
In previous research, 30 percent of the adults could identify the difference. Seventy percent of them could not. The team did not include in their data whether these adults took musical training or not. In this study, they found that six-month-old babies got the same results as adults.
Music ability is inborn
Scott Adler said that it is impossible that six-month-old babies have already taken any training in music formally. He knows that all children hear music, but none of them have received any specific training in music.
Adler said that the ability is inborn. Adler's team collaborated with Professor Charles Chubb on the study.
Professor Chubb's team researched with adults and adolescents as his subjects. They found that there are two groups of individuals. Some could identify major and minor notes. However, most of them could not do so. The team found that adults who could identify notes did not undergo any training in music.
The new study included infants, and the team believes that a person's ability to identify notes might be genetic. This ability could imply that a person could appreciate the emotions of certain music because major and minor notes give emotions to music.
The team let 30 six-month-old infants hear a tone-scramble. It is a series of notes where the quality of music signaled where the subsequent picture would appear. They assigned the babies to which side they should look for a major or a minor sound.
After hearing a series of notes, a picture would appear on either side to indicate whether it is a major or a minor tone scramble. They did a second experiment where tone-scrambles did not predict the location of pictures.
Adler said that they measured how the infants knew where the picture was going to show up, depending on the tone. He also said that if the infants could identify the tone, they would know where the picture would show up. Their eye movement would show that they could predict the picture series through the notes they hear.
The team found that about a third or 33 percent of the infants were accurate at predicting the picture appearance, and 67 percent of them did not. Adler also said that the results they got could also be a reliable source for language development.
They are not sure how it happens. Researchers believe that music, music processing, and math abilities are connected. They also noted that language connects to them. When people talk to the babies by changing their intonation, they are shifting from major to minor.
That action is an essential component for the little ones to learn a language. Without capacity, it could affect the language learning of the infant.
Scott Adler is an associate professor at the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Health. He is also a member of Vision: Science to Applications (VISTA) Program at the Centre for Vision Research.
