Wednesday, May 3rd, 2023, from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m., followed by a cocktail.
Université de Montréal, Pavilion Marie-Victorin, Room D-427
The recording of the lecture is available: here
Growing up musically: Infants’ everyday experiences sharing music with others
Abstract: From infancy, our first relationship with music is highly social. Caregivers become our first ‘musical mentors’, using song and music in daily routines to play and soothe. Through attention, movement, and vocalizations, children become active musical partners – notably, before most children learn to walk, they begin to dance. In my research program, I explore the development of musical engagement, with particular focus on the social-emotional consequences of sharing music with others. In this talk, I will present data exploring how infants and caregivers connect in both dyadic contexts and during wider community-based musical experiences (i.e., caregiver-infant audiences watching a musical performance). In the second part of the talk, I will present research exploring how infants and young children continue to become active participants in music, especially through movement. By using video recordings of children dancing at home to experimenter-generated playlists, we explored how age, song familiarity, tempo, and adult-rated groove level influence children’s propensity to dance, accuracy in tempo matching, and joyful expression. Moving with others in synchrony has important prosocial benefits even early in life, which has promising implications for future studies.
Bio: I am an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of Toronto Scarborough and the director of the TEMPO lab (timing, entrainment, & music perception). I completed my PhD in the Department of Psychology, Neuroscience and Behaviour at McMaster University under the supervision of Dr. Laurel Trainor, and my postdoctoral work at U of T Mississauga with Dr. Sandra Trehub. My research focuses on how engaging in musical activities can be a social and an emotional experience for infants. I use behavioural and physiological methods (e.g. skin conductance, electroencephalography) to investigate the development of music perception and production. I am specifically interested in how infants direct prosociality toward musical partners, how infant directed singing can influence the caregiver-infant relationship, and how rhythm perception and production develops across infancy and childhood.
