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    Rate of infant carrying impacts infant spontaneous motor tempo

    Rocha, Sinead - Elouise and Southgate, Victoria and Mareschal, Denis (2021) Rate of infant carrying impacts infant spontaneous motor tempo. Royal Society Open Science 8 (9), ISSN 2054-5703.

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    Abstract

    Rhythm production is a critical component of human interaction, not least forming the basis of our musicality. Infants demonstrate a spontaneous motor tempo (SMT), or natural rate of rhythmic movement. Here, we ask whether infant SMT is influenced by the rate of locomotion infants experience when being carried. Ten-month-old, non-walking infants were tested using a free drumming procedure before and after 10 min of being carried by an experimenter walking at a slower (98 BPM) or faster (138 BPM) than average tempo. We find that infant SMT is differentially impacted by carrying experience dependent on the tempo at which they were carried: infants in the slow-walked group exhibited a slower SMT from pre-test to post-test, while infants in the fast-walked group showed a faster SMT from pre-test to post-test. Heart rate data suggest that this effect is not due to a general change in the state of arousal. We argue that being carried during caregiver locomotion is a predominant experience for infants throughout the first years of life, and as a source of regular, vestibular, information, may at least partially form the basis of their sense of rhythm.

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Rhythm, Spontaneous Motor Tempo, Infants, Locomotion, Development
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences
    Research Centres and Institutes: Brain and Cognitive Development, Centre for (CBCD)
    Depositing User: Administrator
    Date Deposited: 03 Nov 2021 14:41
    Last Modified: 02 Aug 2023 18:12
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/45775

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