Photo: Copyright (c) 2022 eggeegg/Shutterstock.
Dr Sam Mehr didn't have to go far to find subjects for his study into the impact of lullabies on babies: his own two children, now aged three and six "were some of our earliest research participants".
And the early findings?
"Well, I would say that of all the things that parents do with very young children, singing to them seems to be one of the most consistent psychological effects that you can find in your own home."
"Pretty much every infant out there loves to hear music and tends to find music quite soothing when it's intended to be soothing like a lullaby, or exciting when it's intended to be exciting, like a play song."
Mehr works at The Music Lab which, based at Auckland University, studies the psychology of music – how it affects us and why.
Photo: The Music Lab
Talking to RNZ Concert Three to Seven host Bryan Crump about the Music Lab's ongoing study into the workings of that miracle we call music, Mehr says one of the strongest findings from all its research is that humans, regardless of age, can spot a lullaby. Even if it's from a completely different culture to their own.
Photo: Provided
And while there are differences – for example, Anglo-Saxon parents (those of us who sing Brahms' Lullaby) tend to sing to their infants in a major key, while many other cultures do the same in the minor – there are several unifying characteristics.
They're slow, they're soft, they're simple and they're repetitive.
Okay, at this point, we can probably say science has caught up with millions of years of human evolution over thousands of generations, but can Dr Mehr and The Music Lab, tell us how lullabies work?
Why is it that some music has a calming effect?
Or is it, suggests Crump (having done a very unscientific straw poll around RNZ) that the real benefit of a lullaby is that it calms the parent down and that's what settles the child?
Mehr agrees there is something to that hypothesis, but it's not a full explanation.
Clearly there's scope for more research. The Music Lab is seeking volunteers for its latest study which is looking at what happens when more singing is brought into the family environment.
Participants get new songs to sing to their children. In return, they may get the odd text message asking them if their baby's been crying lately, and what they did in response.
Photo: RNZ / Cole Eastham-Farrelly
Evolutionary theory provides some clues. Our brains have learnt to perceive loud and harsh noises as threats, warnings or signs of danger, while soft, soothing ones are likely to be less dangerous, and maybe even conciliatory.
But reality also throws up curve balls. Mehr cites the example of the research done at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, where testing on some primates found a preference for the sound of fingernails on a blackboard ahead of any human lullaby.
Which reminds Crump that one of Mehr's former colleagues is the Canadian cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker who described music as an evolutionary cheesecake, a tasty by-product of human evolution, but not a significant adaptation itself.
Steven Pinker; partial to a bit of cheesecake. Photo: Supplied
Mehr is equivocal on that idea. Musical language isn't identical across cultures (remember Anglo-Saxons sing lullabies in major keys, many other cultures calm kids in minor ones) but music itself is universal.
Perhaps, asked Crump, once we humans had evolved the ability to process sound in a certain why, evolution then rewarded those of our ancestors who capitalised on that perception to help create a greater sense of social cohesion.
And isn't the ability to work together the thing that makes humans such dangerous animals? Think of how we learn to march or dance or row in time, or sing in tune.
But at that point on RNZ Concert Three to Seven it was time to play some more music.
Plenty of scope, we think, not just for more research, but another interview with Dr Sam Mehr.
