In the first year, infants show sensitivity to…

• A. Language and facial expressions.
• B. Pitch, rhythm, and contour.
• C. Tempo and timbre only.
• D. Memory of melodies.

Answer: (B)

Infants in the first year are tuned to the basic auditory cues that give shape to music: pitch, rhythm, and the contour of melodies. Pitch allows detecting high versus low tones and small changes in pitch; rhythm provides the sense of timing and patterns in sound; contour refers to the overall ups-and-downs of a melody as it moves. Together, these features let babies notice and discriminate musical sequences long before they understand words, supporting early music perception and even linking to how they pick up language prosody, which shares these same features. The other options lean away from the core musical processing infants show early on—language and facial expressions are more about social and linguistic cues, focusing only on tempo and timbre misses the broader sensitivity to pitch and contour, and memory of melodies reflects recognition after exposure rather than spontaneous perceptual sensitivity in the first year.