The difference between major and minor scales plays a central role in Western music. However, recent research using random tone sequences (“tone-scrambles”) has revealed a dramatically bimodal distribution in sensitivity to this difference: 30% of listeners are near perfect in classifying major versus minor tone-scrambles; the other 70% perform near chance. Here, whether or not infants show this same pattern is investigated. The anticipatory eye-movements of thirty 6-month-old infants were monitored during trials in which the infants heard a tone-scramble whose quality (major versus minor) signalled the location (right versus left) where a subsequent visual stimulus (the target) would appear. For 33% of infants, these anticipatory eye-movements predicted target location with near perfect accuracy; for the other 67%, the anticipatory eye-movements were unrelated to the target location. In conclusion, six-month-old infants show the same distribution as adults in sensitivity to the difference between major versus minor tone-scrambles.

中文翻译：

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对主要和次要音乐模式的敏感性在婴儿中双峰分布。

在西方音乐中，主要音阶和次音阶之间的差异起着核心作用。但是，最近使用随机音调序列（“音调”）的研究表明，对这种差异的敏感性具有显着的双峰分布：30％的听众在区分主要音调和次要音调时几乎是完美的；另外70％的人表现差强人意。在这里，调查婴儿是否表现出相同的模式。在试验期间监测了30名6个月大婴儿的预期眼球运动，其中婴儿听到了声音混乱的声音，其质量（主要与次要）表明了随后的视觉刺激（目标）的位置（左右）。会出现。对于33％的婴儿，这些预期的眼球运动以近乎完美的准确性预测目标位置。另外67％预期的眼动与目标位置无关。总之，六个月大的婴儿对大声调和小声调之间的差异敏感度与成年人相同。