Infant memory for musical experiences

Recent findings suggest that infants can remember words from stories over 2 week delays (Jusczyk, P. W., gr Hohne, E. A. (1997). Infants' memory for s poken words. Science, 277, 1984-1986). Because music, like language, presen ts infants with a massively complex auditory learning task, it is possible that infant memory for musical stimuli is equally powerful. Seven-month-old infants heard two Mozart sonata movements daily for 2 weeks. Following a 2 week retention interval, the infants were tested on passages of the famili arized music, and passages taken from similar but novel music. Results from two experiments suggest that the infants retained the familiarized music i n long-term memory, and that their listening preferences were affected by t he extent to which familiar passages were removed from the musical contexts within which they were originally learned. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.