Infancy: A musical history tour

Abstract: The talk provides a glimpse of questions, findings, and conceptions of infant musicality over the past 35 years. The tour begins in the 1970s with the onset of systematic empirical research in this domain and ends with recent findings and work in progress. It also touches upon some of the big questions such as musical predispositions, early learning, and relations between music and language.

Bio: Dr. Sandra Trehub, Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto and Director of the Auditory Lab at the Infant and Child Studies Centre in Mississauga, Ontario, has conducted many ground-breaking studies on the development of music, speech, and language in infants and young children. Dr. Trehub has published over 100 articles and book chapters on her research, which ranges from infants’ sound detection and melody discrimination abilities to cross-linguistic and cross-cultural comparisons of maternal singing to infants. Her work has also been featured in many articles in the popular press.