Music's Impact: Birth to Preschool -
Part 1
taken from "Music Advocacy Action
Kit," provided
by The Selmer Company for School Reform sessions
presented by Tim Lautzenheiser and Michael Kumer at
the 1999 Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic in Chicago
* Researchers at Keele University have reported that babies in the womb can hear
and remember music as early as 20 weeks gestation. Babies showed signs of
recognizing songs
played to them in utero during the mothers' 20th-21st weeks of pregnancy. - Nigel
Hawkes, "Foetus Has an Ear for Music at 20 Weeks," The London Times, March 30,
1998.
* An Eastman research project found dramatic increases in language development
and memory skills between those children exposed to music and literature in utero and
their
siblings who were not. - Donald J. Shetler, "The Inquiry into Prenatal Musical
Experience: A Report of the Eastman Project 1980-1987." In "Music and Child
Development" edited by Frank Wilson and Franz Roehmann, (St. Louis, Missouri: MMB
Music, Inc., 1990) 50.
* In a study of fifty-two premature babies and newborns with low birth weight at the
Tallahassee Memorial Regional Medical Center in Tallahassee, Florida, a researcher
reported that playing sixty-minute tapes of vocal music, including lullabies and
children's songs, reduced hospital stay an average of five days. Mean weight loss of
babies was also about 50 percent lower for the group of babies listening to music, formula
intake was less, and stress levels were reduced. - Janet Caine, "The Effects of
Music on the Selected Stress Behaviors, Weight, Caloric and Formula Intake, and Length of
Hospital Stay of Premature and Low Birth
Weight Neonates in a Newborn Intensive Care Unit," Journal of Music Therapy 28
(1991): 180-192.
* At Helen Keller Hospital in Alabama, an experiment with newborns found that 94
percent of crying babies immediately fell asleep without a bottle or pacifier when exposed
to lullaby music. - Lance W. Brunner, "Testimonies Old and New," in
"Music and Miracles," ed. Campbell, pp. 82-84, Caine, "The Effects of
Music," 180-192.
* On the basis of observations and experiments with newborns, neuroscientists
now know that infants are born with neural mechanisms devoted exclusively to music.
Studies show that early and ongoing musical training helps organize and develop children's
brains. - Susan Black, "The Musical Mind," The American School Board
Journal, January 1997.
* A researcher at the University of California at Irvine has found that music
and language are inseparably linked as a single system in the brain. This system is
acquired in the earliest stages of infancy and continues as the child processes the sounds
of human voices around him. - Robert Garfias, "Thoughts on the Processes of
Language and Music Acquisition." In "Music and Child Development"
edited by Frank Wilson and Franz Roehmann, (St. Louis, Missouri: MMB Music, Inc., 1990)
100.
* Music--specifically song--is one of the best training grounds for babies learning to
recognize the tones that add up to spoken language. - Sandra Trehub, University of
Toronto, 1997.
Next week:
Music's Impact: Birth to Preschool - Part 2
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