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A new Brigham Young University study shows that 5-month-old babies can distinguish an upbeat tune, such as “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, from a lineup of gloomier compositions.
By age 9 months, babies can do the opposite and pick out the sorrowful sound of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony from a pack of happy pieces. The musical experiments offer another example of how babies make sense of the world long before they can talk, says BYU psychology professor and study author Ross Flom.
“One of the first things babies understand communicatively is emotion, so for them the melody is the message,” Flom said. “Our study showed that by nine months, babies are categorizing songs as happy or sad the same way that preschoolers and adults do. Infants master so many things in such a short time frame,” Flom said. “I can’t think of a better line of inquiry than how infants learn so much so quickly.”
