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

Franco, Fabia ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1327-1080, Suttora, Chiara, Spinelli, Maria, Kozar, Iryna and Fasolo, Mirco (2021) Singing to infants matters: early singing interactions affect musical preferences and facilitate vocabulary building. Journal of Child Language . pp. 1-26. ISSN 0305-0009 [Article] (Published online first) (doi:10.1017/S0305000921000167)

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Abstract

This research revealed that the frequency of reported infant-parent 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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