Table 1.

Studies of early auditory-motor interaction in newborns and infants up to 6 months included in the review.

Author	Participants	Motor behavior	Method	Auditory stimuli	Results
Birns et al. (1965)	20 newborns; age range: 36–96 h	Body movements	12 trials; online rating of behavioral excitation	Continuous tone (85/90 db) vs. intermittent tone (85 db) vs. silence	The (aroused) newborns were differentially soothed by auditory stimuli. Greater decrease of activity and level of arousal for low-pitch than high-pitch tone
Condon and Sander (1974)	16 newborns; age range: 12 h-14 days	Body movements	1 session; frame-by-frame analysis (30 frames/s)	Male voice (talking)	Synchrony between auditory stimuli and body movements
Collyer and Bench (1974)	11 newborns; age range: 2–8 days	Body movements	Video recordings during 6 trials (3/ear); coding of behavior/activity state	Sound (70 db) during 5 s vs. during 60 s vs. silence	Higher activity states at the onset of sound than in the silence conditions
Thelen (1979)	20 infants; age range: 28–52 weeks	Body movements	Observation of body movements	Babble	Peak in rhythmic arm activity at the same age when they begin to babble (4 months)
Kato et al. (1983)	32 newborns; age range: 1–6 days	Body movements	30 h video recording of leg/arm movements (73 selected periods)	Human voice (spoken to) vs. non-human sound (noise)	Body movement reaction to human voice but not to non-human sound. Newborns can correlate movements with different voices
Miller and Byrne (1983)	24 newborns; age range: 30 72 h	Body movements	Heart rate measurement; coding of behavioral state and body activity during light sleeping	Sound varying in: (1) duration of the transition and (2) pulsed vs. continuous	Heart rate increased but no significant differences in body activity as an effect of auditory stimuli
Rönnqvist and von Hofsten (1994)	26 newborns; age range: 2–6 days	Arm-, hand-, finger movements	Video recording, three conditions: baseline (no stimuli), social (face to face with mother), object (ball moving in front of newborn)	Talking interaction with mother (social condition) and rattle sound attached to the object (object condition)	Different movement patterns between conditions. More finger movements, transitional, and flexion movements of hand in the social condition and more thumb-index finger activity and whole hand extension in the object condition
Locke et al. (1995)	61 infants average age from 18.4 to 37.5 weeks-old	Manual activity	Audio and video recording	Audible or inaudible rattles	Increased shaking in infants who had begun to babble
Ejiri (1998)	28 infants; age range: 5–9 months	Arms shaking	Video recording	Audible or inaudible rattles	Rhythmic activities reached their peak around the onset of canonical babbling
Dibiasi and Einspieler (2002)	29 infants; age range: 9–14 weeks	Body movements	Video recordings of spontaneous movements	Sound (68/77/88db) vs. silence	Tendency to decrease/stop movements in the acoustic (88dB) compared to the silence condition
Iverson and Fagan (2004)	47 infants from 6 to 9 months-old	Body movements	Video recordings during semi-structured play session	Vocalization	Manual activities are linked with communicative gesture-speech system
Nakata and Trehub (2004)	43 infants; age range: 5.5–6.5 months	Body movements	Audiovisual presentation (4 min segments); video recording; coding of minimal body movement	Mother talking vs. mother singing	Reduction of body movements shown more often in the mother singing than mother talking condition
Iverson et al. (2007)	26 infants; age range: 4–7 months	Arms shaking and laterality biases	Play with infants rattles (video recorded)	Rattle with and without sound	Rate of rattle shaking increased from the pre-babble to the babble onset session
Iverson (2010)	NA	NA	Literature review	NA	Motor development is participatory in the emergence of language
Zentner and Eerola (2010)	120 infants; age range: 5–24 months	Body movements	Video recordings and kinematic recordings of body movements; coding of body movement engagement	Eight music/rhythm stimuli: two excerpts of classical music, rhythm-only version of classical music excerpts, children’s music, isochronous drumbeats, music stimulus with rapid tempo shifts vs. two control stimuli: adult-directed speech and infant-directed speech (65 db)	More rhythmic movements to music/rhythm than speech, some tempo flexibility, and more rhythmic coordination with displays of positive affect. Youngest infants (5–7 months) less consistent in behavior than older (less overall rhythmic movements and as much movement to infant-directed speech as to music/rhythm stimuli)
Morgan et al. (2013)	51 infants; age range: 4–7 months	Body movements	Video recording during 1 (10 min) session; coding of level of body activity	Classical music and movie vs. classical music and static image	All infants displayed body movements with music (but not rhythmic movements). More movements in the static image than movie condition
van der Meer and van der Weel (2011)	NA; age range: 3–6 weeks	Arm movements	Sound presentation from speakers attached to right/left wrist; measurement of distance between ipsilateral wrist and ear	Mother talking	Decreased distance between the wrist and ear at the side of sound presentation, indicating intentional control of arm
Lee and Newell (2013)	11 infants; age range: 10–16 weeks	Arm movements	Biweekly observations; 6 trials (60 s); kinematic recordings of right arm-hand movements	Mother’s voice vs. musical tones vs. silence	Both auditory stimuli conditions increased amplitude of arm movements and number of reaches compared with the silence condition
Fujii et al. (2014)	30 infants; age range: 3–4 months	Limb movements and vocalization	Video recordings and kinematic recordings of limb movements with simultaneous sound recordings of vocalization	Music (beats) or silence	Limb movements and vocalization synchronized to the music

NA, information not available; db, decibel; s, seconds; ms, milliseconds; EMG, electromyography.