4.3 Article

Singing to infants matters: Early singing interactions affect musical preferences and facilitate vocabulary building

Journal

JOURNAL OF CHILD LANGUAGE
Volume 49, Issue 3, Pages 552-577

Publisher

CAMBRIDGE UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1017/S0305000921000167

Keywords

family music; song; language acquisition; infant preferences

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The frequency of parent-infant singing interactions predicted infants' performance in music experiments at 6 months and mediated their language development in the second year. High levels of parental singing were associated with less pronounced preference for sung melodies at 6 months and significant advantages in language outcomes later.
This research revealed that the frequency of reported parent-infant singing interactions predicted 6-month-old infants' performance in laboratory music experiments and mediated their language development in the second year. At 6 months, infants (n = 36) were tested using a preferential listening procedure assessing their sustained attention to instrumental and sung versions of the same novel tunes whilst the parents completed an ad-hoc questionnaire assessing home musical interactions with their infants. Language development was assessed with a follow-up when the infants were 14-month-old (n = 26). The main results showed that 6-month-olds preferred listening to sung rather than instrumental melodies, and that self-reported high levels of parental singing with their infants [i] were associated with less pronounced preference for the sung over the instrumental version of the tunes at 6 months, and [ii] predicted significant advantages on the language outcomes in the second year. The results are interpreted in relation to conceptions of developmental plasticity.

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