How rhythm shapes early learning: Understanding, language, focus and connection

We use rhythm as a way to enjoy music, dancing and exercise, but it also plays an important role in the way we navigate day-to-day life. From conversations to doing mundane tasks that require focus, rhythm helps us to organise and coordinate everything that we say and do with ease - so that we can focus on the quality of our interactions rather than how we actually do or say something.

In the first four months of life, infants adapt to their environment by using rhythm in ways that build the foundation for developmental milestones. Straight after brith, an infant’s rooting and sucking reflexes - are essential for feeding and thriving and involve rhythmic coordination with the breath as the infant also gazes at their caregiver, usually their mother.

Secondly, the infant is also genetically primed to respond to changes in light intensity and temperature. In the first four months of life, they entrain their sleep/wake cycle to match the environment and this varies slightly depending on where and when they are born.

The third way of adapting through rhythm involves a kind of dance - the infant waves their arms and kicks their legs, and laughs in response to their caregiver’s gentle voice, animated facial expressions and playful touch. These reciprocated rhythmic patterns are what Professor Colwyn Trevarthen described as the intrinsic motive pulse (IMP).This is a rhythmic blueprint that infants use to start episodes of babbling as they delight in engaging their caregivers in what are called ‘proto conversations’. In other words, the turn-taking aspect of conversations is practised before the infant starts to utter actual words.

At this stage, infants use their inherent sensitivity to rhythm to pick up the smallest sounds in language, located at the very front edge of each phoneme. They learn language by associating each sound with how frequently it shows up with other sounds. DrJenny Saffran documented this incredible capacity and referred to this as a form of statistical or probabilistic learning. All of this happens in the first eight months of life and a child’s vocabulary builds on this foundation. By the same token, neural pruning is highly efficient and also takes place during the first year, stripping away the capacity for processing the sounds of language that have not been used.

The importance of seeing and interacting with the animated and smiling face of mothers and caregivers cannot be underestimated. In Dr Edward Tronick's 'Still Face' experiment, as part of the protocol, the usual flow of interaction and social connection between the infant and the caregiver stopped - because the adult did not respond and suppressed their usual response, the infants were very distressed. Of course, once the social connection was restored each child was soothed and became happy once again.

Last week I spoke about Harry Harlow’s experiments on infant monkeys, which were separated shortly after birth from their real mothers and were given artificial mothers instead. They were emotionally disturbed and when they were introduced to other young monkeys, which had been reared naturally, they were unable to play with them. Why was this? Well according to Daniel Stern, attunement is vital for social adjustment. Why is this so important? Caregivers and siblings play with infants and teach them social skills such as turn taking and mirroring, which deepens a sense of social connection as well as a sense of the self and the other person. On the surface, these aspects of social engagement are clearly so important for interacting with other children, but at a deeper level, they also build the rhythmic foundation for social interaction and anticipation of what is likely to happen next.

We are in an era of technological acceleration and this is exciting in some ways, but we are only just beginning to understand how it may affect us in the future as well as in the present. On the other hand, our understanding and knowledge of early childhood is relatively robust and we need to have debates about that so that all parents can make well-informed decisions about their child’s development.

Let's think for a moment about the circadian sleep wake rhythm. It is so well-established and is so powerful that it has an autonomous function in our cells. And yet, humans have managed to override it by using artificial light. Even candles can disrupt circadian rhythm and stronger light can shift the sleep wake cycle by 12 hours. The effect of artificial light and ambient light is relatively recent in the history of life on earth. Although humans rely on artificial light for extended hours of activity, we also need the sleep / wake cycle for a vibrant life of health and well-being.

Let’s take another example. If the rhythms of social interaction are disrupted, and children start school. lagging behind in terms of social development, we see that they aren’t able to take turns, share, trust one another, and that a lack of exposure to human communication gives rise to speech and language delays, as well as a vocabulary gap and difficulties with learning to read at school.

This post continues in the video where I talk about the crisis in speech, language and communication as well as discuss the two million children who are currently struggling in the school system.

If you would like more information please sign up for 'Why use music instead of words?' webinar or ask a question on the contact page. Webinars are on Thursdays at 8.00PM London UK time.

Enjoy this post? Why not keep reading...