Beatriz Ilari

Babies Un-ravel Music: Preferences and Long-term Memory for Complex Music in Infancy Beatriz Ilari

This book is based on a PhD thesis that investigated infants? preferences and long-term memory for two contrasting two complex pieces of music (Prelude and Forlane) from the suite Le Tombeau de Couperin by Maurice Ravel (1875- 1937). A group of 8.5-month-old infants was randomly assigned to one of four experiments conducted on the Headturn Preference Procedure. The first three experiments examined infants? preferences for the Prelude and the Forlane in piano and orchestral timbres, and the fourth one aimed at infants? long- term memory for complex music. For this experiment, thirty infants were exposed to either the Prelude or the Forlane three times a day for ten consecutive days. Two weeks following the exposure, infants were tested on the HPP. Contrary to the belief that infants are ill equipped to process complex music, this study found that infants could discriminate, encode and recall the two Ravel pieces for at least two weeks. Implications for early childhood music education and for future studies are outlined at the end of the book.