Active Music Lessons Advance Infant Development

Tons of studies have proven that taking music lessons helps students do better in school. But a new, landmark study also shows that musical training positively affects how the brain processes sounds as early as 12 months of age.

In the study, six-month-olds, who were evenly matched in every test category, were divided into two groups – those taking active music lessons and those involved in more passive music instruction. Students in the passive classes, alongside their parents, listened to a collection of Baby Einstein CDs as a teacher encouraged them to engage in ball, block, book, art, and cup stacking stations. Teachers in the active classes engaged students and their parents by focusing on movement, singing, playing percussion instruments, and building a repertoire of lullabies and songs. And at the end of the 6-month-long study, researchers noticed three major findings.

1. Babies in the active classes became more sensitive to tone. Each infant in the study listened to two different versions of the same sonatina. The tonal version was played in G major, as written. And the atonal rendition alternated between G major and G-flat major, so there was no feeling of tonal center. At the end of the study, babies in the active music classes showed preference to the tonal version, demonstrated by greater attentiveness to during G major rendition, while babies in the passive group showed preference to either version.

2. Active music classes affected babies’ brain development. To determine if musical training affects the brains of infants as it does with preschoolers, researches attached electrodes to the babies’ heads to measure brainwave activity. EEG recordings showed that after the six-month study, tone processing was much more advanced for infants in active classes. Their response times were faster and involved more synchronous neural firing than those from the passive group.

3. Infants in active music classes show more advanced social development. At the six-month mark, parents of infants enrolled in active classes reported that their babies showed less distress to limitations and unknown stimuli, more smiling and laughter, and were easier to soothe.

The study results indicate that there are multiple benefits from participatory music classes even in early infancy. So don’t delay. Get your child involved in music lessons today!

Because Music Matters!

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