memory

Every music activity involves listening and memory and often hearing with the minds eye. Listening and memory are part of most aural perceptual processes which contribute to auditory awareness (and thus to conceptual development).

An important function of music is to support memory. All children happily sing the alphabet to the familiar tune Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

Research reveals infants as young as seven months can learn music, form long term memory, and incorporate the structure of the music they have heard. Infants possess far greater sophisticated abilities for music than previously believed.

As early as three months infants use music as a means to remember. Memories of activities associated with a song are triggered when the music is played. This can occur beyond 7 days from the activity when the child is considered to have forgotten.

In music, movement plays a particularly important role because it enables children to assimilate and remember songs and rhymes more easily than would be the case if they were no associated imaginative dramitisation or other movements.