The musical listener
Henkjan Honing · Music Cognition · 2021
Listening experiences of adults, children, babies, as well as “ordinary” and professional listeners give interesting insights into differences and similarities between these groups. It turns out that all listeners (whether musically trained or not), simply by being exposed to certain types of music, unconsciously pick up the statistical regularities of the styles of music they listen to. A revealing study with six-month-old North American babies showed that they were sensitive to rhythmic variations in unfamiliar music, a skill that their parents lacked, but that are easily picked up by adult listeners with a Bulgarian or Macedonian background. This suggests that rhythm perception is a combination of nature and nurture. While we clearly have an innate predisposition to recognize rhythms (and their timing—if you do not use it, you lose it. However, with enough exposure to unfamiliar music, as adults we are still able to learn all kinds of novel aspects like sense of timing, harmony, or appreciate new musical styles.