Music is all around us. At the start of the 21st century, technology in industrialised societies provides us with easy access to a vast amount of recorded music. We can listen to our favourite music at home, in the car, on the train; on home stereos, personal stereos, and through our computers. We are also often surrounded by music which we have not chosen, at the shops, waiting for a train, even at the doctor’s.

Research is beginning to show how music has the power to change the way we feel, think, and behave. We know that music can lift our mood, and certain kinds of music can temporarily boost specific kinds of intelligence. Listening to our favourite music can even help us tolerate high levels of pain.

What do we know about how young children engage with music? There has been quite a lot of research looking at the very early years. We know that babies can remember music from even before birth. My own study with the Child of Our Time group in 2001 showed that exposure to a particular piece of music before birth had long-lasting effects, as the babies seemed to prefer listening to that music up to 15 months after birth. Other studies have explored the features of maternal singing, showing how this can make the baby feel calm.

There are also studies of babies’ responses to music in the lab that show them to be really very sophisticated listeners. In their first year, babies can notice all kinds of small differences in musical sequences, and are even better than adults at some tasks. These findings have led some researchers to suggest that we are somehow biologically “pre-programmed” for responding to music. Music seems to be something that we can’t stop ourselves engaging with, right from the very start.

As every developmental psychologist knows, it is much harder to study toddlers than pretty much any other age range! We know a lot about early babbling and singing, and the sequence of singing development has been intensively studied. In terms of toddlers’ responses to music, though, less is known. An extensive study of children’s musical behaviours by Helmut Moog in the 1970s showed that children aged 2 tended to move a lot in response to music. Their movements became less frequent from the age of 3 and up, as they began to play more with music and use music in social interactions like dancing.