Five-month-olds spot happy and sad music

Babies have a musical ear and can distinguish between upbeat or slower music when they are just five months old, claims a new study.

Background music or the car radio may be having more effect than mums would guess because newborns seem to have a sophisticated ear for music. An experiment by psychologists at Brigham Young University, Utah, shows babies know what they like and don't like. Researchers carried out tests to log a baby's attention levels when music changed. They played some upbeat Beethoven melodies to the tots, but interspersed them with slower, gloomier tunes.

Results published in the journal Infant Behaviour and Development found babies could pick out the happier tunes - their attention lasted four seconds longer when the Beethoven changed from happy to sad, because they registered the change in the music. By the age of nine months, the tots could pick out the sad sound of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony.

Previous studies have claimed that musical influence starts in the womb. A test in 1989 by psychologist Peter Hepper, from Queen's University, Belfast, monitored pregnant women who watched Neighbours, but no other soap. When the babies were born, scientists played the theme tune of the Aussie soap and found the tots' heart beats lowered. But when they listened to the themes of other soaps, there was no difference to their heart beats.

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