German Babies Cry Differently From French Babies, Research Shows

At the 2011 edition of TEDxAmsterdam I opened with a sound example of crying babies (I already mentioned it in an earlier blog here on Psychology Today): if you listen to it carefully you hear that French babies cry differently from German babies (see video below).

We have known for some time that babies possess a keen perceptual sensitivity for the melodic, rhythmic and dynamic aspects of speech and music: aspects that linguists are inclined to categorize under the term ‘prosody’, but which are in fact the building blocks of music. Only much later in a child’s development does he make use of this ‘musical prosody’, for instance in delineating and subsequently recognizing word boundaries. That is one of the reasons why I emphasized in the TEDTalk that this is not likely an early sign of language (as is commonly thought) but an early indication of musical aptitude.

In the TEDxAmsterdam presentation What makes us musical animals shown below, I present several sound examples and listening tests to support my point. Hope you like it.

[if the video does not show, click here for the YouTube video]