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Psychological functions of music in infancy
Samuel Mehr
Research Associate
Principal Investigator, Music Lab
Department of Psychology, Harvard University
In 1871, Darwin wrote, “As neither the enjoyment nor the capacity of producing musical notes are faculties of the least use to man in reference to his daily habits of life, they must be ranked among the most mysterious with which he is endowed.” Nearly 150 years later, the psychological functions of music are still a mystery. Why are humans musical? In this talk I outline a functional account of one common form of music, infant-directed song, proposing that it functions as parental investment in the form of attention. I then present three lines of work supporting this account from three different areas of cognitive science. First, I show that form and function are linked in infant-directed music from many world cultures, such that naïve listeners worldwide can detect it and distinguish it from other forms of vocal music. Second, I present evidence that Prader-Willi syndrome, a genomic imprinting disorder that causes an altered psychology of parental investment, is associated with altered music perception and musical response. Third, I show that typically-developing infants are highly sensitive to the music they hear, remembering it in great detail after long delays, and display social preferences for new people who sing them familiar songs. These findings converge on a key psychological function of music in infancy that may underlie more general features of the human music faculty.