Music is characterized by acoustic forms that are predictive of its behavioural functions. For example, adult listeners accurately identify unfamiliar lullabies as infant-directed on the basis of their musical features alone. This property could reflect a function of listeners’ experiences, the basic design of the human mind, or both. Here, we show that US infants (N = 144) relax in response to eight unfamiliar foreign lullabies, relative to matched non-lullaby songs from other foreign societies, as indexed by heart rate, pupillometry and electrodermal activity. They do so consistently throughout the first year of life, suggesting that the response is not a function of their musical experiences, which are limited relative to those of adults. The infants’ parents overwhelmingly chose lullabies as the songs that they would use to calm their fussy infant, despite their unfamiliarity. Together, these findings suggest that infants may be predisposed to respond to common features of lullabies found in different cultures.

音乐的特点是声学形式可以预测其行为功能。例如，成年听众仅根据其音乐特征就可以准确地将不熟悉的摇篮曲识别为针对婴儿的。该属性可以反映听众体验的功能、人类思维的基本设计，或两者兼而有之。在这里，我们发现美国婴儿（N = 144）在听到八首不熟悉的外国摇篮曲时会放松，相对于来自其他外国社会的匹配的非摇篮曲歌曲，以心率、瞳孔测量和皮肤电活动为索引。他们在生命的第一年里始终如一地这样做，这表明这种反应不是他们的音乐体验的函数，相对于成年人来说，音乐体验是有限的。绝大多数婴儿的父母选择摇篮曲作为他们用来安抚烦躁婴儿的歌曲，尽管他们不熟悉。总之，这些发现表明，婴儿可能倾向于对不同文化中发现的摇篮曲的共同特征做出反应。