On Sat, 16 Dec 2000, Patti Price wrote:
> I received this question via e-mail from one of my students. Is anyone
> familiar with articles that address these questions?
>
> "There has been a claim that classical music soothes the unborn child. At
> how many months would this be possible? How about other kinds
> of music? And will the child respond similarly to similar music
> after birth?"
Two questions here:
1) Does music, classical or otherwise, soothe the fetus?
2) Does a baby, exposed to classical or other music as a fetus,
become soothed when exposed to the same music after birth?
For l), never having been pregant, for which I give thanks, I can
only speculate. By "soothe the fetus", I assume the question
means "less fetal movement". But fetal movement may not indicate
distress, but the contrary. It's even possible that movement by
the fetus is important for neuromuscular development. So it's not
obvious it's a good idea to want to decrease fetal movement.
But it's still an interesting question to ask whether external
sound can affect fetal movement. The fetus can hear in the last
trimester of pregnancy. This was demonstrated in an experiment
(Birnholz & Benacerraf, 1983) involving the application of a loud
"vibroacoustic device" to the pregnant woman's abdomen and
observing fetal blink responses, and by an fMRI study (Hykin et
al, 1999) showing that the fetal auditory cortex lights up to a
nursery rhyme played loudly to the mother's abdomen.
So, one could use ultrasound to monitor fetal movement while
playing various selections (Mozart, Celine Dion, BareNaked
Ladies, silence) loudly at the mother's abdomen. Another thought
for a less high-tech experiment would be to use the mother as a
fetal movement detector, and have her report every 10 seconds
whether the fetus moved as a function of music or no music.
Rather than being soothed, it's possible that the fetus might
instead bop along to the sound. Any pregnant moms out there want
to give it a try?
As for (2), I'm not aware of any study showing that prenatal
exposure to classical music soothes a baby postnatally. But if
you're talking soap themes, the answer is yes. Hepper (1991)
carried out a truly neat natural experiment involving pregnant
mums whose favourite soap was the Australian programme
"Neighbours". These fetuses got a lot of the Neighbours theme,
considering that it was on at least once, and sometimes twice a
day. The control group were mothers who didn't watch it. Two to
four days after birth, playing the "Neighbours" theme decreased
heart-rate and movement in the experimentals, but not in the
controls. Hepper also showed in a follow-up experiment that
"Neighbours" babies didn't respond either to the theme of
"Coronation Street", another soap, or to "Neighbours" played
backwards. But in support of my "bopping hypothesis", he did find
(using ultrasound) that "Neighbours" fetuses moved more in utero
to the sound of that theme than did control fetuses.
-Stephen
References
Birnholz, J., & Bernacerraf, B. (1983). The development of human
fetal hearing. Science, 22, 516-518.
Hepper, P. (1991). An examination of fetal learning before and
after birth. The Irish Journal of Psychology, 12, 95-107
Hykin, J. et al (1999). Fetal brain activity demonstrated by
functional magnetic resonance imaging. The Lancet, 354, 645.
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Stephen Black, Ph.D. tel: (819) 822-9600 ext 2470
Department of Psychology fax: (819) 822-9661
Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Lennoxville, QC
J1M 1Z7
Canada Department web page at http://www.ubishops.ca/ccc/div/soc/psy
Check out TIPS listserv for teachers of psychology at:
http://www.frostburg.edu/dept/psyc/southerly/tips/
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