Moving with a partner to the musical beat may make people more cooperative — even babies as young as 14 months.

随着音乐节拍和一位同伴一起手舞足蹈能让人更具合作精神——甚至连14个月大的婴儿也是如此。

Researchers worked with 48 toddlers, each held by an assistant and gently bounced for about two minutes to the rhythm of the Beatles’ version of “Twist and Shout.” They faced an experimenter who bounced in the same rhythm or off the beat.

研究者们对48个初学走路的婴儿进行研究，每个婴儿由一位辅导员拉着，随着披头士乐队(Beatles)演唱的《摇摆和呐喊》(Twist and Shout)的节奏轻轻跳大约两分钟。他们面前的实验者以同样的节奏或者不按节奏跳跃。

Then the scientists tested whether the babies would help out when an experimenter “accidentally” dropped an object, or tried to pick up an object just out of hand’s reach. The study was published online in Developmental Science.

然后科学家们测验当实验者“不小心”掉了一个物品或者想捡起一个无法伸手就够到的物品时，这些婴儿是否会帮忙。这项研究公布在《发育科学》(Developmental Science)期刊的在线版本上。

After controlling for other behaviors, such as smiling or approaching the experimenter, they found that babies who were bounced in a synchronous¹ rhythm were slightly but significantly more likely to help than those who were bounced off beat. Although the effect was moderate, the authors say, it was still impressive given the quite short duration of the interaction.

对诸如微笑或者接近实验者等其他行为加以考虑后，他们发现跟着节拍跳跃的婴儿们比不按节拍跳跃的婴儿更愿意去帮助，虽然只是稍微而已，但是很明显。作者们说，虽然影响有限，但仍令人印象深刻，毕竟互动的时间很短。

“We tend to think that music is a frill that doesn’t matter,” said the lead author, Laurel J. Trainor, a professor of psychology² at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. “But in fact, these social binds³ that we form early in development affect everything that happens later, including our ability to learn and how we view others and ourselves.”

“我们通常认为音乐无关紧要，”主要作者劳蕾尔·J·特雷纳(Laurel J. Trainor)说。她是安大略省汉密尔顿市麦克马斯特大学的心理学教授。“但是实际上，在发育初期形成的这些社会联系影响到后来发生的所有事情，包括学习能力以及如何看待他人和自己。”