Words by: Ashley Taira
In our ongoing exploration of bath time routines, one aspect consistently stands out: the prevalence of singing. Across various families, nursery rhymes and short tunes have become integral to nightly rituals, transforming bath time into a captivating performance. Recognizing this common thread, we thought it would be valuable to discuss singing and its impact on your child’s development.
It may seem like common sense that singing to your child can help grow their vocabulary. You may have seen this outlined in catchy news headlines, in books on parenting, or even heard it in passing from a fellow parent. But what is the actual mechanism behind this? Why can simple nursery rhymes be so impactful, and why is it that singing can be the key to unlocking communication development? Delving into research sheds light on these questions.
At the University of Cambridge, researchers utilized neuroimaging techniques to track how infants process phonetic information when listening to nursery rhymes. In a longitudinal study of 50 infants during their first year of life, the researchers found that even before infants can speak, they are capable of phonetic encoding. They also showed a progressive increase in this ability between seven and 11 months of age. EEG data revealed that the infants seemed to be encoding the stress patterns and rhythmicity of the words in the nursery rhymes. In a press release for this study, head researcher, Professor Usha Goswami said:
“We believe that speech rhythm information is the hidden glue underpinning the development of a well-functioning language system. Infants can use rhythmic information like a scaffold or skeleton to add phonetic information on to. For example, they might learn that the rhythm pattern of English words is typically strong-weak, as in ‘daddy’ or ‘mummy’, with the stress on the first syllable. They can use this rhythm pattern to guess where one word ends and another begins when listening to natural speech.” -Professor Usha Goswami
In a different project involving musical interventions, researchers at McMaster University studied 60 families with infants under the age of 12 months old. Twenty of these families were enrolled in a 6-month active participatory music experience, 14 of these families were enrolled in a 6-month passive participatory music experience, and the remaining 26 families did not receive any sort of treatment or enrollment. At the end of the 6 months, the researchers found that infants in the active condition used social communicative hand gestures at a significantly higher rate than those in the passive condition (Figure 1). The researchers concluded that this active participatory music experience enhanced socio-emotional development among the infants and increased communication between infants and their parents.
Figure 1. In Gerry, Unrau, & Trainor (2012), Developmental Science. Shaded bars indicate communication scores in the active participatory music condition, while white bars indicate communication scores in the passive participatory music condition.
Additionally, this study also notes the importance of tonality. At the end of the study, the researchers tested each infant’s responsiveness to tonal versus atonal sounds, and measured the infant’s level of interest through looking times. They found that infants in the active participatory music experience condition demonstrated longer looking times towards tonal sounds compared to the other groups, who showed no preference. This suggests that active engagement with music not only enhances infants' language and social skills but also heightens their sensitivity to tonal variations, which may play a crucial role in their overall auditory and cognitive development.
Figure 2. Image of mom singing to children, generated by AI.
In closing, even something as simple as a short nursery rhyme has the ability to shape children’s language and communication development through elements like tonality, rhythmicity, and an understanding of stress and word boundaries. But the benefits don’t stop there – singing fosters an emotional bond between a parent and a child, creating a safe space for communication and expression. It boosts creativity, encourages imagination, and instills a lifelong love for music and language. We’re so happy to see so many families already incorporating music into their bath time routines, and we encourage you to continue doing so!
So, next time you find yourself humming a tune, invite your child to join in. Your voice is more than just music, it’s the key that unlocks a world of language and imagination.
Citations:
1. Di Liberto, G. M., Attaheri, A., Cantisani, G., Reilly, R. B., Ní Choisdealbha, Á., Rocha, S., ... & Goswami, U. (2023). Emergence of the cortical encoding of phonetic features in the first year of life. Nature communications, 14(1), 7789.
2. Gerry, D., Unrau, A., & Trainor, L. J. (2012). Active music classes in infancy enhance musical, communicative and social development. Developmental Science, 15(3), 398-407.
Comments