Research has shown that babies learn to speak by mimicking the words they hear from the people around them. Reading to children aloud from an early age can activate brain areas linked to visual imagery, and understanding the meaning of language. According to a recent study, there’s something else that babies are able to mimic, with an impressive amount of accuracy. A research team at Ohio State University found that babies sometimes imitate singing.
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After 15-month-old James heard the song, “Happy Birthday,” from a toy he was playing with, researchers recorded him making sounds similar to the song’s tune, only a few hours later. After analyzing the recording, they found that the boy was correctly singing the tune in G-major, and he hit the first six notes of the song with impressive accuracy.
Later, James’ mother sang the song, “Rain, rain, go away,” to him, twice. About six hours later, the researchers recorded James singing a similar tune, while playing with his father.
The study’s lead author, Lucia Benetti, explained, “We know that throughout the first year of life babies become sophisticated music listeners — they learn a lot about the patterns of pitches and rhythms in music, and infants become better at doing this spontaneously. But we don’t know much about how exactly this happens.”
The researchers concluded that additional studies including more children would need to be conducted to gain more accurate results, but the small study suggested that babies are able to learn songs and melodies from a young age, simply by hearing the tune.
“The social aspect of music is important — if a baby sees their mother singing, they know she’s engaging with that song, that she’s enjoying it, and they know it must be important,” Benetti added. “I think that social context is important. It’s engaging and it’s socially relevant, and for them, that’s enough.”