Morgan Gin, Killough Cynthia M, Thompson Laura A
New Mexico State University, USA.
Psychol Music. 2013 Mar;41(2). doi: 10.1177/0305735611425897.
Humans are often exposed to music beginning at birth (or even before birth), yet the study of the development of musical abilities during infancy has only recently gained momentum. The goals of the present study were to determine whether young infants (ages four to seven months) spontaneously moved rhythmically in the presence of music, and whether the presence of visual information in addition to music would increase or decrease infants' movement. While nearly all infants moved in the presence of music, very few infants demonstrated rhythmic movement. Results revealed that, when visual information was present, and particularly when infants appeared to show focused attention toward the visual information, infants moved less than when only auditory information was present. The latter result is in agreement with most studies of sensory dominance in adults in which visual stimuli are dominant over auditory stimuli.
人类从出生（甚至在出生前）就经常接触音乐，然而，对婴儿期音乐能力发展的研究直到最近才开始兴起。本研究的目的是确定年幼的婴儿（四到七个月大）在有音乐的情况下是否会自发地做出有节奏的动作，以及除了音乐之外，视觉信息的存在是否会增加或减少婴儿的动作。虽然几乎所有婴儿在有音乐的情况下都会动，但很少有婴儿表现出有节奏的动作。结果显示，当有视觉信息时，尤其是当婴儿似乎对视觉信息表现出专注的注意力时，婴儿的动作比只存在听觉信息时要少。后一个结果与大多数关于成年人感觉优势的研究一致，在这些研究中视觉刺激比听觉刺激更具优势。
