On the occasion of the “International Day of Women and Girls in Science” on February 11, TÜBİTAK’s Science and Technology magazine published an interview by Dr. Özlem Ak with TÜBİTAK Incentive Award winner Dr. Gaye Soley, which we are sharing with readers of Boğaziçi’nde Bilim.

Music has always been an integral part of Dr. Gaye Soley’s life. She began studying piano at a conservatory part-time while in primary school and continued throughout her education. After graduating from Cağaloğlu Anatolian High School, she enrolled in Boğaziçi University’s Department of Psychology and continued her piano training as an undergraduate student. Music, which she never set aside, eventually shaped her academic research interests. During her university years, she spent a year as an exchange student at the University of Washington in the United States, where she gained experience in a research laboratory working with infants. This experience changed the direction of her life—combining her background in both music and psychology, she decided to pursue studies that united the two fields. After graduating, she was accepted to Harvard University, where she began her doctoral research on the development of musical perception.

Her first doctoral advisor’s research focused on how growing up in different musical cultures shapes musical perception—an area that particularly interested Dr. Soley, as Turkey has a rich and diverse musical culture, including irregular (asymmetric) rhythms. Although she later had to adjust her topic when her advisor left the department, she continued to focus on music—this time exploring its role in social and cognitive development. After completing her PhD, she worked for two years as a postdoctoral researcher at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, where she studied the relationship between music and language. In 2013, she returned to Boğaziçi University and joined the Department of Psychology, where she continues her academic research.

According to Dr. Soley, auditory development begins very early—by the sixth month of pregnancy, fetuses can perceive and differentiate between melodies. Because music can be perceived so early, its effects can also be observed early in life. For centuries, parents have sung lullabies and songs to calm, soothe, or engage their babies—a practice that continues even today. Research shows that musical behaviors such as singing together or moving in rhythm strengthen the emotional bond between parent and child.

However, understanding the cognitive effects of music from infancy onward is not easy. Studies with older children have shown that regular music education has positive effects on language, reading, and verbal abilities, but there is no strong evidence that it enhances intelligence or mathematical ability. Dr. Soley emphasizes that, contrary to popular belief, there is no scientific proof that music training increases intelligence. Nonetheless, learning to play an instrument engages multiple areas of the brain simultaneously and helps keep the brain active.

The popular belief that “classical music makes babies smarter” originated from a 1990s study conducted with adults. In that study, one group listened to a Mozart sonata, while another listened to relaxing sounds for ten minutes, after which both groups took an IQ test. The Mozart group performed slightly better on the spatial reasoning portion. This limited finding was then widely exaggerated, giving rise to the so-called “Mozart effect.” Some U.S. states even distributed Mozart CDs to new parents. Yet the study’s results could have been influenced by factors other than the music itself. Dr. Soley cautions that exposing children to diverse musical styles is far more beneficial than focusing on a single type of music. She also notes that music is a complex stimulus—even simple background music requires brain processing, which can be tiring if constant. Therefore, she does not recommend continuous music exposure for babies.

Dr. Soley is also the director of the Infant and Child Development Laboratory within Boğaziçi University’s Department of Psychology. The lab conducts studies with children ranging from four months to twelve years old, and occasionally with adults for comparison. The research shows that even very young children can make surprisingly consistent inferences, and even small differences in wording can influence how they generalize information—just like adults. Her current projects explore music as a cultural phenomenon and examine how both children and adults perceive it as part of cultural identity. Her team also studies how children form social categories—such as religion, language, race, and gender—how biases emerge, and how they can be reduced.

During the pandemic, research has been conducted online. Normally, experiments take place in soundproof rooms where babies watch short videos or puppet shows while researchers measure their attention spans. According to Dr. Soley, infants are remarkably consistent in paying longer attention to images or sounds they find surprising or interesting.

Dr. Gaye Soley advises young people to pursue the subjects they are genuinely curious and passionate about. She believes curiosity is the foundation of success. She encourages her students—and all young people—to set aside stress and anxiety about the future while learning, listen actively, and nurture their curiosity. She concludes with a simple but powerful reminder:
“Curiosity matters.”