Dancin’ Dancin’ Dancin’….They’re a “Dancin’ Machine!”
Bruce Chandler

According to a new study, babies innately respond to rhythm more than speech, meaning that dancing comes naturally to infants.

The findings suggest humans may be born with a predisposition to move rhythmically in response to music.

In the experiment, which was recorded on video, babies were perched on their mother’s or father’s lap while psychologists played a recording of music. The babies moved their heads, arms, legs and bodies in time to the beat of various different genres of music.

One of the study’s authors says, “It remains to be understood why humans have developed this particular predisposition. One possibility is that it was a target of natural selection for music or that it has evolved for some other function that just happens to be relevant for music processing.”

The study also found that the more the babies’ movements were synchronized to the music, the more they smiled.