Background
Rhythms are everywhere in our environment, like in our heart beats and speech patterns, or in social behaviours. Perception of auditory rhythms like speech or music requires the ability to recognize patterns in sounds. This is especially the case when multiple interpretations are possible. In music, one can hear a six-beat rhythm without accents (i.e., notes emphasized by loudness) in different ways. This could be three groups of two beats (like a march) or two groups of three beats (like a waltz). Internal processes like attention or learned biases can influence our interpretation of rhythms. For example, adults from western cultures typically group beats in twos, like a march.
The Research Question: Can Babies Interpret Rhythm?
Interestingly, we can measure these internal processes that support rhythm perception in our brain activity, even as babies. We know that babies demonstrate some ability to sense rhythm right from birth. Nonetheless, researchers do not fully understand the extent to which babies can apply their own interpretation of rhythm. My PhD work (Flaten, 2024) showed for the first time that we can influence a baby’s brain to interpret a rhythm as either a march or a waltz (Flaten et al., 2022). In contrast, adults proved less flexible in their interpretation of rhythms. This is likely because of learned biases towards the march interpretation (Flaten et al., 2024). However, when adults actively paid attention, they were more open to different interpretations.
Conclusion
Overall, the research helps us understand how the brain processes rhythm in babies and adults from western cultures. This has implications form music and language perception development.
References
Flaten, E. (2024). Top-down influences on neural processing of rhythm in infants and adults [McMaster University]. https://macsphere.mcmaster.ca/handle/11375/30591
Flaten, E., Marshall, S. A., Dittrich, A., & Trainor, L. J. (2022). Evidence for top‐down metre perception in infancy as shown by primed neural responses to an ambiguous rhythm. European Journal of Neuroscience, 55(8), 2003–2023. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejn.15671
Flaten, E., Carrillo, C., Trainor, L. (2024) Western adults’ neural responses to an ambiguous rhythm: Effects of priming with and without active attention. Authorea. Manuscript Under Review. https://doi.org/10.22541/au.172814927.73345976/v2
About the Author
Dr. Erica Flaten
Dr. Erica Flaten is currently a postdoctoral fellow working with Dr. Janet Werker in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia where she is investigating the role of rhythm for early language development. Prior to this she completed her PhD working with Dr. Laurel Trainor in the Auditory Development lab at McMaster University, where she investigated the neural correlates of musical rhythm perception in infants and adults. Overall, Erica is interested in how different rhythms can engage brain, behaviour, and physiology across development.
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