It all starts with music – musical intervals in neonatal crying

ABSTRACT

Background: Having had ample opportunity to become acquainted with their mother’s voice melody in the womb, newborns have been found to exhibit salient ‘musical’ elements in their own cry melodies. Musical interval-like substructures have also been observed in young infants crying. The aim of the study was to answer the question of whether interval-like substructures regularly occur in crying. Method: Here, we studied for the first time, a total of 2740 cry utterances from 58 healthy, term-born infants at a mean age of 3 days. Results and Conclusion: The study demonstrated that intervals are regularly occurring in crying with the semitone being the prevailing interval. No sex differences were found.

KEYWORDS:

• Crying
• frequency interval
• semitone
• music

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.