Dear all,

You are invited to attend this week's Cognitive Area Seminar talk on *Friday Feb 5th, 3:30 - 5 PM *(STBIO, 1205 Dr. Penfield Ave., Room S3/4).

The talk will be given by* Laura Cirelli (PhD Candidate, Department of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behaviour, McMaster University)*, and is titled "Babies bopping to the beat: The social effects of interpersonal synchrony in infancy". For a full abstract, see below dashed line.

If you are unable to attend this week's talk, there will be more opportunities. Please see our full talk schedule @: http://www.mcgill.ca/psychology/events-colloquia-0/brownbag-series.

Also, there will be a social and post-seminar journal blitz at Thomson House (3650 Rue McTavish) after this week's talk, at 5:15 PM; Students, post-docs, and faculty are welcome to join to describe a research article of interest, and talk at greater length with the speaker.

If you would like to join the Cognitive Area group mailing list for further notification of our seminars, please go to this link and follow the instructions: http://mx0.psych.mcgill.ca/mailman/listinfo/coggroup.

Hope that you are able to attend!

Best, Anna

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*Babies bopping to the beat: The social effects of interpersonal synchrony in infancy*

Laura Cirelli, PhD candidate, Department of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behaviour, McMaster University

When we move together in synchrony with others (e.g. by walking in step, rowing, dancing, singing or clapping), affiliative behaviours are encouraged. People are subsequently more cooperative, helpful, and trusting towards people with whom they moved synchronously compared to asynchronously. Musical engagement provides an ideal context for aligning movements in time with others, due to the human propensity to move to the underlying pulse in music. My dissertation work investigates the social effects of interpersonal synchrony in early development. This talk will present the results from a series of studies investigating how interpersonal synchrony influences helping behaviour in 14-month-old infants. The research examines to whom infants direct their increased helpfulness following interpersonal synchrony, and how it influences behaviour in both musical and non-musical contexts. The findings suggest that musical behaviours have important consequences for early social development and suggest that musical engagement is important in early life.