Title | Infant memory for musical experiences. |
Publication Type | Journal Article |
Year of Publication | 2000 |
Authors | Saffran JR, Loman MM, Robertson RR |
Journal | Cognition |
Volume | 77 |
Issue | 1 |
Pagination | B15-23 |
Date Published | 2000 Oct 16 |
ISSN | 0010-0277 |
Keywords | Female, Humans, Infant, Male, Mental Recall, Music, Psychology, Child, Retention (Psychology) |
Abstract | 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. |
Alternate Journal | Cognition |
PubMed ID | 10980255 |
Grant List | HD03352 / HD / NICHD NIH HHS / United States |