Singing calms baby longer than talking

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/10/151028054532.htm

Date: October 28, 2015
Source: University of Montreal
Summary:
In a new study, infants remained calm twice as long when listening to a song, which they didn't even know, as they did when listening to speech.

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"Emotional self-control is obviously not developed in infants, and we believe singing helps babies and children develop this capacity." The study, recently published in Infancy, involved thirty healthy infants aged between six and nine months.

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studies have shown that the songs we sing to infants have a specific range of tones and rhythms," explained first author Mariève Corbeil, also of the University of Montreal. "Every parent knows it's not much use singing Rihanna to their baby!"

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"Our findings leave little doubt about the efficacy of singing nursery rhymes for maintaining infants' composure for extended periods," Peretz said.

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The findings are important because mothers, and Western mothers in particular, speak much more often than they sing to their children, missing out on the emotion-regulatory properties of singing. The researchers believe that singing could be particularly useful for the parents who are challenged by adverse socio-economic or emotional circumstances. "Although infant distress signals typically prompt parental comforting interventions, they induce frustration and anger in some at-risk parents, leading to insensitive responding and, in the worst cases, to infant neglect or abuse," Peretz said. "At-risk parents within the purview of social service agencies could be encouraged to play vocal music to infants and, better still, to sing to them."