ABSTRACT

This chapter begins with an exploration of sensitivity to sound before birth, and presents some intriguing findings in the literature on fetal and newborn responses to auditory stimuli, focusing on the human voice and music. It focuses on music perception and cognition in infants, examining some surprising musical capacities they demonstrate in the first year of life. The chapter addresses the social significance of music in infants' lives, touching on studies that address social dimensions of infant music cognition, and caregiver–infant interactions involving expressive speech and singing directed to infants. It describes research procedures in some detail, as readers are often curious as to how studies are carried out during the prenatal period or with young infants in the laboratory. Most studies that have investigated possible links between prenatal exposure and newborn responses to auditory stimuli have focused on responses to speech, and relatively few studies have examined the possible effects of prenatal exposure to music.