MANY FOUNDATIONAL QUESTIONS IN THE psychology of music require cross-cultural approaches, yet the... more MANY FOUNDATIONAL QUESTIONS IN THE psychology of music require cross-cultural approaches, yet the vast majority of work in the field to date has been conducted with Western participants and Western music. For cross-cultural research to thrive, it will require collaboration between people from different disciplinary backgrounds, as well as strategies for overcoming differences in assumptions, methods, and terminology. This position paper surveys the current state of the field and offers a number of concrete recommendations focused on issues involving ethics, empirical methods, and definitions of ''music'' and ''culture.''
Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 2020
Psychological scientists have become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology an... more Psychological scientists have become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and replicability, and infancy researchers in particular face specific challenges related to replicability: For example, high-powered studies are difficult to conduct, testing conditions vary across labs, and different labs have access to different infant populations. Addressing these concerns, we report on a large-scale, multisite study aimed at (a) assessing the overall replicability of a single theoretically important phenomenon and (b) examining methodological, cultural, and developmental moderators. We focus on infants’ preference for infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS). Stimuli of mothers speaking to their infants and to an adult in North American English were created using seminaturalistic laboratory-based audio recordings. Infants’ relative preference for IDS and ADS was assessed across 67 laboratories in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia using the three common methods for measuring infants’ discrimination (head-turn preference, central fixation, and eye tracking). The overall meta-analytic effect size (Cohen’s d) was 0.35, 95% confidence interval = [0.29, 0.42], which was reliably above zero but smaller than the meta-analytic mean computed from previous literature (0.67). The IDS preference was significantly stronger in older children, in those children for whom the stimuli matched their native language and dialect, and in data from labs using the head-turn preference procedure. Together, these findings replicate the IDS preference but suggest that its magnitude is modulated by development, native-language experience, and testing procedure.
■ Mothers around the world sing to infants, presumably to regulate their mood and arousal. Lullab... more ■ Mothers around the world sing to infants, presumably to regulate their mood and arousal. Lullabies and playsongs differ stylistically and have distinctive goals. Mothers sing lullabies to soothe and calm infants and playsongs to engage and excite infants. In this study, mothers repeatedly sang Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star to their infants (n = 30 dyads), alternating between soothing and playful renditions. Infant attention and mother-infant arousal (i.e., skin conductivity) were recorded continuously. During soothing renditions, mother and infant arousal decreased below initial levels as the singing progressed. During playful renditions, maternal and infant arousal remained stable. Moreover, infants exhibited greater attention to mother during playful renditions than during soothing renditions. Mothers' playful renditions were faster , higher in pitch, louder, and characterized by greater pulse clarity than their soothing renditions. Mothers also produced more energetic rhythmic movements during their playful renditions. These findings highlight the contrastive nature and consequences of lullabies and playsongs. ■
Parents commonly vocalize to infants to mitigate their distress, especially when holding them is ... more Parents commonly vocalize to infants to mitigate their distress, especially when holding them is not possible. Here we examined the relative efficacy of parents' speech and singing (familiar and unfamiliar songs) in alleviating the distress of 8-and 10-month-old infants (n ϭ 68 per age group). Parent-infant dyads participated in 3 trials of the Still Face procedure, featuring a 2-min Play Phase, a Still Face phase (parents immobile and unresponsive for 1 min or until infants became visibly distressed), and a 2-min Reunion Phase in which caregivers attempted to reverse infant distress by (a) singing a highly familiar song, (b) singing an unfamiliar song, or (c) expressive talking (order counterbalanced across dyads). In the Reunion Phase, talking led to increased negative affect in both age groups, in contrast to singing familiar or unfamiliar songs, which increased infant attention to parent and decreased negative affect. The favorable consequences were greatest for familiar songs, which also generated increased smiling. Skin conductance recorded from a subset of infants (n ϭ 36 younger, 41 older infants) revealed that arousal levels were highest for the talking reunion, lowest for unfamiliar songs, and intermediate for familiar songs. The arousal effects, considered in conjunction with the behavioral effects, confirm that songs are more effective than speech at mitigating infant distress. We suggest, moreover, that familiar songs generate higher infant arousal than unfamiliar songs because they evoke excitement, reflected in modestly elevated arousal as well as pleasure, in contrast to more subdued responses to unfamiliar songs.
Many scholars consider preferences for consonance, as defined by Western music theorists, to be b... more Many scholars consider preferences for consonance, as defined by Western music theorists, to be based primarily on biological factors, while others emphasize experiential factors, notably the nature of musical exposure. Cross-cultural experiments suggest that consonance preferences are shaped by musical experience , implying that preferences should emerge or become stronger over development for individuals in Western cultures. However, little is known about this developmental trajectory. We measured preferences for the consonance of simultaneous sounds and related acoustic properties in children and adults to characterize their developmental course and dependence on musical experience. In Study 1, adults and children 6 to 10 years of age rated their liking of simultaneous tone combinations (dyads) and affective vocalizations. Preferences for consonance increased with age and were predicted by changing preferences for harmonicity-the degree to which a sound's frequencies are multiples of a common fundamental frequency-but not by evaluations of beating-fluctuations in amplitude that occur when frequencies are close but not identical, producing the sensation of acoustic roughness. In Study 2, musically trained adults and 10-year-old children also rated the same stimuli. Age and musical training were associated with enhanced preference for consonance. Both measures of experience were associated with an enhanced preference for harmonicity, but were unrelated to evaluations of beating stimuli. The findings are consistent with cross-cultural evidence and the effects of musicianship in Western adults in linking Western musical experience to preferences for consonance and harmonicity.
Rhythmic movement to music, whether deliberate (e.g., dancing) or inadvertent (e.g., foot-tapping... more Rhythmic movement to music, whether deliberate (e.g., dancing) or inadvertent (e.g., foot-tapping), is ubiquitous. Although parents commonly report that infants move rhythmically to music, especially to familiar music in familiar environments, there has been little systematic study of this behavior. As a preliminary exploration of infants' movement to music in their home environment, we studied V, an infant who began moving rhythmically to music at 6 months of age. Our primary goal was to generate testable hypotheses about movement to music in infancy. Across nine sessions, beginning when V was almost 19 months of age and ending 8 weeks later, she was video-recorded by her mother during the presentation of 60-s excerpts from two familiar and two unfamiliar songs presented at three tempos-the original song tempo as well as faster and slower versions. V exhibited a number of repeated dance movements such as head-bobbing, arm-pumping, torso twists, and bouncing. She danced most to Metallica's Now that We're Dead, a recording that her father played daily in V's presence, often dancing with her while it played. Its high pulse clarity, in conjunction with familiarity, may have increased V's propensity to dance, as reflected in lesser dancing to familiar music with low pulse clarity and to unfamiliar music with high pulse clarity. V moved faster to faster music but only for unfamiliar music, perhaps because arousal drove her movement to familiar music. Her movement to music was positively correlated with smiling, highlighting the pleasurable nature of the experience. Rhythmic movement to music may have enhanced her pleasure, and the joy of listening may have promoted her movement. On the basis of behavior observed in this case study, we propose a scaled-up study to obtain definitive evidence about the effects of song familiarity and specific musical features on infant rhythmic movement, the developmental trajectory of dance skills, and the typical range of variation in such skills.
International Journal of Music in Early Childhood, 2019
Primary caregivers throughout the world provide infants with life-sustaining care such as nutriti... more Primary caregivers throughout the world provide infants with life-sustaining care such as nutrition and protection from harm as well as life-enhancing care such as affection, contingent responsiveness and mentoring of various kinds. They nurture infants musically by means of one-on-one (i.e. infant-directed) singing accompanied by movement in some cultures and by visual gestures in others. Such singing, which is acoustically and visually distinct from solitary (i.e. self-directed) singing, is effective in engaging infants and regulating their mood and arousal. The repetition and stereotypy of caregivers' performances contribute to their memorability and dyadic significance. Caregivers' singing also influences infants' social engagement more generally. Once infants become singers, their songs play an important role in social interaction and emotional self-regulation. Although caregivers sing to infants with playful or soothing intentions, their performances highlight the temporal and melodic structure of the music. In sum, caregivers lay the foundation for a lifelong musical journey.
Across cultures, aspects of music and dance contribute to everyday life in a variety of ways that... more Across cultures, aspects of music and dance contribute to everyday life in a variety of ways that do not depend on artistry, aesthetics, or expertise. In this chapter, we focus on precursors to music and dance that are evident in infancy: the underlying perceptual abilities, parent–infant musical interactions that are motivated by nonmusical goals, the consequences of such interactions for mood regulation and social regulation, and the emergence of rudimentary singing and rhythmic movement to music. These precursors to music and dance lay the groundwork for our informal engagement with music throughout life and its continuing effects on mood regulation , affiliation, and well-being.
Infants typically experience music through social interactions with others. One such experience i... more Infants typically experience music through social interactions with others. One such experience involves caregivers singing to infants while holding and bouncing them rhythmically. These highly social interactions shape infant music perception and may also influence social cognition and behavior. Moving in time with others—interpersonal synchrony—can direct infants' social preferences and prosocial behavior. Infants also show social preferences and selective prosociality toward singers of familiar, socially learned melodies. Here, we discuss recent studies of the influence of musical engagement on infant social cognition and behavior, highlighting the importance of rhythmic movement and socially relevant melodies.
Infants are highly selective in their help to unfamiliar individuals. For example, they offer mor... more Infants are highly selective in their help to unfamiliar individuals. For example, they offer more help to partners who move synchronously with them rather than asynchronously and to partners who interact with them in a " nice " rather than " mean " manner. Infant-directed song and speech may also encourage infant helping by signaling caregiver quality. In the present study, we investigated the effect of infant-directed song and recitation on 14-month-old infants' subsequent helpfulness and proximity-seeking in relation to unfamiliar performers. During a 2.5-minute exposure phase, infants sat on their caregiver's lap opposite an experimenter who sang " The Ants Go Marching " (song condition), recited the lyrics (recitation condition), or remained silent while parents read them a book (baseline condition). After the exposure phase, infants participated in a series of helping tasks that necessitated the return of objects dropped " accidentally ". Infants in the song and recitation conditions helped more than those in the baseline condition, but their helping of singers was moderated by song familiarity. Specifically, the extent of help directed to singers correlated positively with song familiarity. Singing (and to some extent, recitation) also encouraged infants to seek proximity with the experimenter. The findings indicate that rhythmic song and recitation by an unfamiliar adult foster infant affiliative behavior, but familiar songs may have special social importance.
The present study explored the singing ability of toddlers 16 months to 3 years of age by examini... more The present study explored the singing ability of toddlers 16 months to 3 years of age by examining North American adults' ability to identify toddlers' renditions of familiar tunes sung with foreign lyrics. After listening to each toddler's song, half with familiar melodies and half with unfamiliar melodies, adults attempted to name the songs. Their identification was highly accurate, refuting the prevailing view that toddlers focus on words at the expense of tunes. The singing range of these non-English-speaking toddlers and that of their English-speaking counterparts approximated the pitch range of the target songs, which is inconsistent with the reportedly small singing range of toddlers. Toddlers' apparent singing proficiency in the present context may stem from the use of home-based recordings and child-selected songs.
CHILDREN AND ADULTS, WITH OR WITHOUT MUSIC training, exhibit better memory for vocal melodies (wi... more CHILDREN AND ADULTS, WITH OR WITHOUT MUSIC training, exhibit better memory for vocal melodies (without lyrics) than for instrumental melodies (Weiss,
The present study examined the influence of infant visual cues on maternal vocal and facial expre... more The present study examined the influence of infant visual cues on maternal vocal and facial expressiveness while speaking or singing and the influence of maternal visual cues on infant attention. Experiment 1 asked whether mothers exhibit more vocal emotion when speaking and singing to infants in or out of view. Adults judged which of each pair of audio excerpts (in view, out of view) sounded more emotional. Face-to-face vocalizations were judged more emotional than vocaliza-tions to infants out of view. Moreover, mothers smiled considerably more while singing than while speaking to infants. Experiment 2 examined the influence of video feedback from infants on maternal speech and singing. Maternal vocalizations in the context of video feedback were judged to be less emotional than those in face-to-face contexts but more emotional than those in out-of-view contexts. Experiment 3 compared six-month-old infants' attention to maternal speech and singing with audio-only versions or with silent video-only versions. Infants exhibited comparable attention to audio-only versions of speech and singing but greater attention to video-only versions of singing. The present investigation is unique in documenting the contribution of infant visual feedback to maternal vocal emotion in contexts that control for infants' presence, visibility, and proximity.
Much is known about the efficacy of infant-directed (ID) speech and singing for capturing attenti... more Much is known about the efficacy of infant-directed (ID) speech and singing for capturing attention, but little is known about their role in regulating affect. In Experiment 1, infants 7–10 months of age listened to scripted recordings of ID speech, adult-directed speech, or singing in an unfamiliar language (Turkish) until they met a criterion of distress based on negative facial expression. They listened to singing for roughly twice as long as speech before meeting the distress criterion. In Experiment 2, they were exposed to natural recordings of ID speech or singing in a familiar language. As in Experiment 1, ID singing was considerably more effective than speech for delaying the onset of distress. We suggest that the temporal patterning of ID singing, with its regular beat, metrical organization, and tempo, plays Correspondence should be sent to Sandra E. Trehub,
This study investigates the oral gestures of 8-month-old infants in response to audiovisual prese... more This study investigates the oral gestures of 8-month-old infants in response to audiovisual presentation of lip and tongue smacks. Infants exhibited more lip gestures than tongue gestures following adult lip smacks and more tongue gestures than lip gestures following adult tongue smacks. The findings, which are consistent with predictions from Articulatory Phonology, imply that 8-month-old infants are capable of producing goal-directed oral gestures by matching the articulatory organ of an adult model.
Western music is characterized primarily by simple meters, but a number of other musical cultures... more Western music is characterized primarily by simple meters, but a number of other musical cultures, including Turkish, have both simple and complex meters. In Experiment 1, Turkish and American adults with and without musical training were asked to detect metrical changes in Turkish music with simple and complex meter. Musicians performed significantly better than nonmusicians, and performance was significantly better on simple meter than on complex meter, but Turkish listeners performed no differently than American listeners. In Experiment 2, members of Turkish classical and folk music clubs who were tested on the same materials exhibited comparable sensitivity to simple and complex meters, unlike the American and Turkish listeners in Experiment 1. Together, the findings reveal important effects of musical training and culture on meter perception: trained musicians are generally more sensitive than nonmusicians, regardless of metrical complexity, but sensitivity to complex meter requires sufficient exposure to musical genres featuring such meters.
The available evidence indicates that the music of a culture reflects the speech rhythm of the pr... more The available evidence indicates that the music of a culture reflects the speech rhythm of the prevailing language. The normalized pairwise variability index (nPVI) is a measure of durational contrast between successive events that can be applied to vowels in speech and to notes in music. Music–language parallels may have implications for the acquisition of language and music, but it is unclear whether native-language rhythms are reflected in children's songs. In general, children's songs exhibit greater rhythmic regularity than adults' songs, in line with their caregiving goals and frequent coordination with rhythmic movement. Accordingly, one might expect lower nPVI values (i.e., lower variability) for such songs regardless of culture. In addition to their caregiving goals, children's songs may serve an intuitive didactic function by modeling culturally relevant content and structure for music and language. One might therefore expect pronounced rhythmic parallels between children's songs and language of origin. To evaluate these predictions, we analyzed a corpus of 269 English and French songs from folk and children's music anthologies. As in prior work, nPVI values were significantly higher for English than for French children's songs. For folk songs (i.e., songs not for children), the difference in nPVI for English and French songs was small and in the expected direction but non-significant. We subsequently collected ratings from American and French monolingual and bilingual adults, who rated their familiarity with each song, how much they liked it, and whether or not they thought it was a children's song. Listeners gave higher familiarity and liking ratings to songs from their own culture, and they gave higher familiarity and preference ratings to children's songs than to other songs. Although higher child-directedness ratings were given to children's than to folk songs, French listeners drove this effect, and their ratings were uniquely predicted by nPVI. Together, these findings suggest that language-based rhythmic structures are evident in children's songs, and that listeners expect exaggerated language-based rhythms in children's songs. The implications of these findings for enculturation processes and for the acquisition of music and language are discussed.
MANY FOUNDATIONAL QUESTIONS IN THE psychology of music require cross-cultural approaches, yet the... more MANY FOUNDATIONAL QUESTIONS IN THE psychology of music require cross-cultural approaches, yet the vast majority of work in the field to date has been conducted with Western participants and Western music. For cross-cultural research to thrive, it will require collaboration between people from different disciplinary backgrounds, as well as strategies for overcoming differences in assumptions, methods, and terminology. This position paper surveys the current state of the field and offers a number of concrete recommendations focused on issues involving ethics, empirical methods, and definitions of ''music'' and ''culture.''
Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science, 2020
Psychological scientists have become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology an... more Psychological scientists have become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and replicability, and infancy researchers in particular face specific challenges related to replicability: For example, high-powered studies are difficult to conduct, testing conditions vary across labs, and different labs have access to different infant populations. Addressing these concerns, we report on a large-scale, multisite study aimed at (a) assessing the overall replicability of a single theoretically important phenomenon and (b) examining methodological, cultural, and developmental moderators. We focus on infants’ preference for infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS). Stimuli of mothers speaking to their infants and to an adult in North American English were created using seminaturalistic laboratory-based audio recordings. Infants’ relative preference for IDS and ADS was assessed across 67 laboratories in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia using the three common methods for measuring infants’ discrimination (head-turn preference, central fixation, and eye tracking). The overall meta-analytic effect size (Cohen’s d) was 0.35, 95% confidence interval = [0.29, 0.42], which was reliably above zero but smaller than the meta-analytic mean computed from previous literature (0.67). The IDS preference was significantly stronger in older children, in those children for whom the stimuli matched their native language and dialect, and in data from labs using the head-turn preference procedure. Together, these findings replicate the IDS preference but suggest that its magnitude is modulated by development, native-language experience, and testing procedure.
■ Mothers around the world sing to infants, presumably to regulate their mood and arousal. Lullab... more ■ Mothers around the world sing to infants, presumably to regulate their mood and arousal. Lullabies and playsongs differ stylistically and have distinctive goals. Mothers sing lullabies to soothe and calm infants and playsongs to engage and excite infants. In this study, mothers repeatedly sang Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star to their infants (n = 30 dyads), alternating between soothing and playful renditions. Infant attention and mother-infant arousal (i.e., skin conductivity) were recorded continuously. During soothing renditions, mother and infant arousal decreased below initial levels as the singing progressed. During playful renditions, maternal and infant arousal remained stable. Moreover, infants exhibited greater attention to mother during playful renditions than during soothing renditions. Mothers' playful renditions were faster , higher in pitch, louder, and characterized by greater pulse clarity than their soothing renditions. Mothers also produced more energetic rhythmic movements during their playful renditions. These findings highlight the contrastive nature and consequences of lullabies and playsongs. ■
Parents commonly vocalize to infants to mitigate their distress, especially when holding them is ... more Parents commonly vocalize to infants to mitigate their distress, especially when holding them is not possible. Here we examined the relative efficacy of parents' speech and singing (familiar and unfamiliar songs) in alleviating the distress of 8-and 10-month-old infants (n ϭ 68 per age group). Parent-infant dyads participated in 3 trials of the Still Face procedure, featuring a 2-min Play Phase, a Still Face phase (parents immobile and unresponsive for 1 min or until infants became visibly distressed), and a 2-min Reunion Phase in which caregivers attempted to reverse infant distress by (a) singing a highly familiar song, (b) singing an unfamiliar song, or (c) expressive talking (order counterbalanced across dyads). In the Reunion Phase, talking led to increased negative affect in both age groups, in contrast to singing familiar or unfamiliar songs, which increased infant attention to parent and decreased negative affect. The favorable consequences were greatest for familiar songs, which also generated increased smiling. Skin conductance recorded from a subset of infants (n ϭ 36 younger, 41 older infants) revealed that arousal levels were highest for the talking reunion, lowest for unfamiliar songs, and intermediate for familiar songs. The arousal effects, considered in conjunction with the behavioral effects, confirm that songs are more effective than speech at mitigating infant distress. We suggest, moreover, that familiar songs generate higher infant arousal than unfamiliar songs because they evoke excitement, reflected in modestly elevated arousal as well as pleasure, in contrast to more subdued responses to unfamiliar songs.
Many scholars consider preferences for consonance, as defined by Western music theorists, to be b... more Many scholars consider preferences for consonance, as defined by Western music theorists, to be based primarily on biological factors, while others emphasize experiential factors, notably the nature of musical exposure. Cross-cultural experiments suggest that consonance preferences are shaped by musical experience , implying that preferences should emerge or become stronger over development for individuals in Western cultures. However, little is known about this developmental trajectory. We measured preferences for the consonance of simultaneous sounds and related acoustic properties in children and adults to characterize their developmental course and dependence on musical experience. In Study 1, adults and children 6 to 10 years of age rated their liking of simultaneous tone combinations (dyads) and affective vocalizations. Preferences for consonance increased with age and were predicted by changing preferences for harmonicity-the degree to which a sound's frequencies are multiples of a common fundamental frequency-but not by evaluations of beating-fluctuations in amplitude that occur when frequencies are close but not identical, producing the sensation of acoustic roughness. In Study 2, musically trained adults and 10-year-old children also rated the same stimuli. Age and musical training were associated with enhanced preference for consonance. Both measures of experience were associated with an enhanced preference for harmonicity, but were unrelated to evaluations of beating stimuli. The findings are consistent with cross-cultural evidence and the effects of musicianship in Western adults in linking Western musical experience to preferences for consonance and harmonicity.
Rhythmic movement to music, whether deliberate (e.g., dancing) or inadvertent (e.g., foot-tapping... more Rhythmic movement to music, whether deliberate (e.g., dancing) or inadvertent (e.g., foot-tapping), is ubiquitous. Although parents commonly report that infants move rhythmically to music, especially to familiar music in familiar environments, there has been little systematic study of this behavior. As a preliminary exploration of infants' movement to music in their home environment, we studied V, an infant who began moving rhythmically to music at 6 months of age. Our primary goal was to generate testable hypotheses about movement to music in infancy. Across nine sessions, beginning when V was almost 19 months of age and ending 8 weeks later, she was video-recorded by her mother during the presentation of 60-s excerpts from two familiar and two unfamiliar songs presented at three tempos-the original song tempo as well as faster and slower versions. V exhibited a number of repeated dance movements such as head-bobbing, arm-pumping, torso twists, and bouncing. She danced most to Metallica's Now that We're Dead, a recording that her father played daily in V's presence, often dancing with her while it played. Its high pulse clarity, in conjunction with familiarity, may have increased V's propensity to dance, as reflected in lesser dancing to familiar music with low pulse clarity and to unfamiliar music with high pulse clarity. V moved faster to faster music but only for unfamiliar music, perhaps because arousal drove her movement to familiar music. Her movement to music was positively correlated with smiling, highlighting the pleasurable nature of the experience. Rhythmic movement to music may have enhanced her pleasure, and the joy of listening may have promoted her movement. On the basis of behavior observed in this case study, we propose a scaled-up study to obtain definitive evidence about the effects of song familiarity and specific musical features on infant rhythmic movement, the developmental trajectory of dance skills, and the typical range of variation in such skills.
International Journal of Music in Early Childhood, 2019
Primary caregivers throughout the world provide infants with life-sustaining care such as nutriti... more Primary caregivers throughout the world provide infants with life-sustaining care such as nutrition and protection from harm as well as life-enhancing care such as affection, contingent responsiveness and mentoring of various kinds. They nurture infants musically by means of one-on-one (i.e. infant-directed) singing accompanied by movement in some cultures and by visual gestures in others. Such singing, which is acoustically and visually distinct from solitary (i.e. self-directed) singing, is effective in engaging infants and regulating their mood and arousal. The repetition and stereotypy of caregivers' performances contribute to their memorability and dyadic significance. Caregivers' singing also influences infants' social engagement more generally. Once infants become singers, their songs play an important role in social interaction and emotional self-regulation. Although caregivers sing to infants with playful or soothing intentions, their performances highlight the temporal and melodic structure of the music. In sum, caregivers lay the foundation for a lifelong musical journey.
Across cultures, aspects of music and dance contribute to everyday life in a variety of ways that... more Across cultures, aspects of music and dance contribute to everyday life in a variety of ways that do not depend on artistry, aesthetics, or expertise. In this chapter, we focus on precursors to music and dance that are evident in infancy: the underlying perceptual abilities, parent–infant musical interactions that are motivated by nonmusical goals, the consequences of such interactions for mood regulation and social regulation, and the emergence of rudimentary singing and rhythmic movement to music. These precursors to music and dance lay the groundwork for our informal engagement with music throughout life and its continuing effects on mood regulation , affiliation, and well-being.
Infants typically experience music through social interactions with others. One such experience i... more Infants typically experience music through social interactions with others. One such experience involves caregivers singing to infants while holding and bouncing them rhythmically. These highly social interactions shape infant music perception and may also influence social cognition and behavior. Moving in time with others—interpersonal synchrony—can direct infants' social preferences and prosocial behavior. Infants also show social preferences and selective prosociality toward singers of familiar, socially learned melodies. Here, we discuss recent studies of the influence of musical engagement on infant social cognition and behavior, highlighting the importance of rhythmic movement and socially relevant melodies.
Infants are highly selective in their help to unfamiliar individuals. For example, they offer mor... more Infants are highly selective in their help to unfamiliar individuals. For example, they offer more help to partners who move synchronously with them rather than asynchronously and to partners who interact with them in a " nice " rather than " mean " manner. Infant-directed song and speech may also encourage infant helping by signaling caregiver quality. In the present study, we investigated the effect of infant-directed song and recitation on 14-month-old infants' subsequent helpfulness and proximity-seeking in relation to unfamiliar performers. During a 2.5-minute exposure phase, infants sat on their caregiver's lap opposite an experimenter who sang " The Ants Go Marching " (song condition), recited the lyrics (recitation condition), or remained silent while parents read them a book (baseline condition). After the exposure phase, infants participated in a series of helping tasks that necessitated the return of objects dropped " accidentally ". Infants in the song and recitation conditions helped more than those in the baseline condition, but their helping of singers was moderated by song familiarity. Specifically, the extent of help directed to singers correlated positively with song familiarity. Singing (and to some extent, recitation) also encouraged infants to seek proximity with the experimenter. The findings indicate that rhythmic song and recitation by an unfamiliar adult foster infant affiliative behavior, but familiar songs may have special social importance.
The present study explored the singing ability of toddlers 16 months to 3 years of age by examini... more The present study explored the singing ability of toddlers 16 months to 3 years of age by examining North American adults' ability to identify toddlers' renditions of familiar tunes sung with foreign lyrics. After listening to each toddler's song, half with familiar melodies and half with unfamiliar melodies, adults attempted to name the songs. Their identification was highly accurate, refuting the prevailing view that toddlers focus on words at the expense of tunes. The singing range of these non-English-speaking toddlers and that of their English-speaking counterparts approximated the pitch range of the target songs, which is inconsistent with the reportedly small singing range of toddlers. Toddlers' apparent singing proficiency in the present context may stem from the use of home-based recordings and child-selected songs.
CHILDREN AND ADULTS, WITH OR WITHOUT MUSIC training, exhibit better memory for vocal melodies (wi... more CHILDREN AND ADULTS, WITH OR WITHOUT MUSIC training, exhibit better memory for vocal melodies (without lyrics) than for instrumental melodies (Weiss,
The present study examined the influence of infant visual cues on maternal vocal and facial expre... more The present study examined the influence of infant visual cues on maternal vocal and facial expressiveness while speaking or singing and the influence of maternal visual cues on infant attention. Experiment 1 asked whether mothers exhibit more vocal emotion when speaking and singing to infants in or out of view. Adults judged which of each pair of audio excerpts (in view, out of view) sounded more emotional. Face-to-face vocalizations were judged more emotional than vocaliza-tions to infants out of view. Moreover, mothers smiled considerably more while singing than while speaking to infants. Experiment 2 examined the influence of video feedback from infants on maternal speech and singing. Maternal vocalizations in the context of video feedback were judged to be less emotional than those in face-to-face contexts but more emotional than those in out-of-view contexts. Experiment 3 compared six-month-old infants' attention to maternal speech and singing with audio-only versions or with silent video-only versions. Infants exhibited comparable attention to audio-only versions of speech and singing but greater attention to video-only versions of singing. The present investigation is unique in documenting the contribution of infant visual feedback to maternal vocal emotion in contexts that control for infants' presence, visibility, and proximity.
Much is known about the efficacy of infant-directed (ID) speech and singing for capturing attenti... more Much is known about the efficacy of infant-directed (ID) speech and singing for capturing attention, but little is known about their role in regulating affect. In Experiment 1, infants 7–10 months of age listened to scripted recordings of ID speech, adult-directed speech, or singing in an unfamiliar language (Turkish) until they met a criterion of distress based on negative facial expression. They listened to singing for roughly twice as long as speech before meeting the distress criterion. In Experiment 2, they were exposed to natural recordings of ID speech or singing in a familiar language. As in Experiment 1, ID singing was considerably more effective than speech for delaying the onset of distress. We suggest that the temporal patterning of ID singing, with its regular beat, metrical organization, and tempo, plays Correspondence should be sent to Sandra E. Trehub,
This study investigates the oral gestures of 8-month-old infants in response to audiovisual prese... more This study investigates the oral gestures of 8-month-old infants in response to audiovisual presentation of lip and tongue smacks. Infants exhibited more lip gestures than tongue gestures following adult lip smacks and more tongue gestures than lip gestures following adult tongue smacks. The findings, which are consistent with predictions from Articulatory Phonology, imply that 8-month-old infants are capable of producing goal-directed oral gestures by matching the articulatory organ of an adult model.
Western music is characterized primarily by simple meters, but a number of other musical cultures... more Western music is characterized primarily by simple meters, but a number of other musical cultures, including Turkish, have both simple and complex meters. In Experiment 1, Turkish and American adults with and without musical training were asked to detect metrical changes in Turkish music with simple and complex meter. Musicians performed significantly better than nonmusicians, and performance was significantly better on simple meter than on complex meter, but Turkish listeners performed no differently than American listeners. In Experiment 2, members of Turkish classical and folk music clubs who were tested on the same materials exhibited comparable sensitivity to simple and complex meters, unlike the American and Turkish listeners in Experiment 1. Together, the findings reveal important effects of musical training and culture on meter perception: trained musicians are generally more sensitive than nonmusicians, regardless of metrical complexity, but sensitivity to complex meter requires sufficient exposure to musical genres featuring such meters.
The available evidence indicates that the music of a culture reflects the speech rhythm of the pr... more The available evidence indicates that the music of a culture reflects the speech rhythm of the prevailing language. The normalized pairwise variability index (nPVI) is a measure of durational contrast between successive events that can be applied to vowels in speech and to notes in music. Music–language parallels may have implications for the acquisition of language and music, but it is unclear whether native-language rhythms are reflected in children's songs. In general, children's songs exhibit greater rhythmic regularity than adults' songs, in line with their caregiving goals and frequent coordination with rhythmic movement. Accordingly, one might expect lower nPVI values (i.e., lower variability) for such songs regardless of culture. In addition to their caregiving goals, children's songs may serve an intuitive didactic function by modeling culturally relevant content and structure for music and language. One might therefore expect pronounced rhythmic parallels between children's songs and language of origin. To evaluate these predictions, we analyzed a corpus of 269 English and French songs from folk and children's music anthologies. As in prior work, nPVI values were significantly higher for English than for French children's songs. For folk songs (i.e., songs not for children), the difference in nPVI for English and French songs was small and in the expected direction but non-significant. We subsequently collected ratings from American and French monolingual and bilingual adults, who rated their familiarity with each song, how much they liked it, and whether or not they thought it was a children's song. Listeners gave higher familiarity and liking ratings to songs from their own culture, and they gave higher familiarity and preference ratings to children's songs than to other songs. Although higher child-directedness ratings were given to children's than to folk songs, French listeners drove this effect, and their ratings were uniquely predicted by nPVI. Together, these findings suggest that language-based rhythmic structures are evident in children's songs, and that listeners expect exaggerated language-based rhythms in children's songs. The implications of these findings for enculturation processes and for the acquisition of music and language are discussed.
Adults tend to perceive and produce rhythmic structures with simple duration ratios and implied i... more Adults tend to perceive and produce rhythmic structures with simple duration ratios and implied isochrony. If these biases result from long-term exposure to Western metrical structure, they should be evident in North American adults but not in infants. Adult similarity judgments were obtained for alterations of folk melodies that maintained or matched the original metrical structure, whether simple or complex, and for alterations that violated or mismatched the original metrical structure. Adults rated mismatching alterations as less similar than matching alterations, for simple meter patterns, but their ratings of matching and mismatching alterations did not differ for complex meter patterns. Infants, who were tested with a familiarization preference procedure, responded differentially to matching and mismatching alterations for complex as well as simple meter patterns. These findings imply that adult biases reflect long-term exposure to culture-specific metrical structure rather t...
Parents commonly vocalize to infants to mitigate their distress, especially when holding them is ... more Parents commonly vocalize to infants to mitigate their distress, especially when holding them is not possible. Here we examined the relative efficacy of parents’ speech and singing (familiar and unfamiliar songs) in alleviating the distress of 8- and 10-month-old infants (n = 68 per age group). Parent–infant dyads participated in 3 trials of the Still Face procedure, featuring a 2-min Play Phase, a Still Face phase (parents immobile and unresponsive for 1 min or until infants became visibly distressed), and a 2-min Reunion Phase in which caregivers attempted to reverse infant distress by (a) singing a highly familiar song, (b) singing an unfamiliar song, or (c) expressive talking (order counterbalanced across dyads). In the Reunion Phase, talking led to increased negative affect in both age groups, in contrast to singing familiar or unfamiliar songs, which increased infant attention to parent and decreased negative affect. The favorable consequences were greatest for familiar songs,...
Infants are highly selective in their help to unfamiliar individuals. For example, they offer mor... more Infants are highly selective in their help to unfamiliar individuals. For example, they offer more help to partners who move synchronously with them rather than asynchronously and to partners who interact with them in a “nice” rather than “mean” manner. Infant-directed song and speech may also encourage infant helping by signaling caregiver quality. In the present study, we investigated the effect of infant-directed song and recitation on 14-month-old infants’ subsequent helpfulness and proximity-seeking in relation to unfamiliar performers. During a 2.5-minute exposure phase, infants sat on their caregiver’s lap opposite an experimenter who sang “The Ants Go Marching” (song condition), recited the lyrics (recitation condition), or remained silent while parents read them a book (baseline condition). After the exposure phase, infants participated in a series of helping tasks that necessitated the return of objects dropped “accidentally”. Infants in the song and recitation conditions ...
The field of psychology has become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and ... more The field of psychology has become increasingly concerned with issues related to methodology and replicability. Infancy researchers face specific challenges related to replicability: high-powered studies are difficult to conduct, testing conditions vary across labs, and different labs have access to different infant populations, amongst other factors. Addressing these concerns, we report on a large-scale, multi-site study aimed at 1) assessing the overall replicability of a single theoretically-important phenomenon and 2) examining methodological, situational, cultural, and developmental moderators. We focus on infants’ preference for infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS). Stimuli of mothers speaking to their infants and to an adult were created using semi-naturalistic laboratory-based audio recordings in North American English. Infants’ relative preference for IDS and ADS was assessed across XYZ laboratories in North America and Europe using the three common...
Mothers around the world sing to infants, presumably to regulate their mood and arousal. Lullabie... more Mothers around the world sing to infants, presumably to regulate their mood and arousal. Lullabies and playsongs differ stylistically and have distinctive goals. Mothers sing lullabies to soothe and calm infants and playsongs to engage and excite infants. In this study, mothers repeatedly sang Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star to their infants ( n = 30 dyads), alternating between soothing and playful renditions. Infant attention and mother–infant arousal (i.e., skin conductivity) were recorded continuously. During soothing renditions, mother and infant arousal decreased below initial levels as the singing progressed. During playful renditions, maternal and infant arousal remained stable. Moreover, infants exhibited greater attention to mother during playful renditions than during soothing renditions. Mothers' playful renditions were faster, higher in pitch, louder, and characterized by greater pulse clarity than their soothing renditions. Mothers also produced more energetic rhythmi...
Across cultures, aspects of music and dance contribute to everyday life in a variety of ways that... more Across cultures, aspects of music and dance contribute to everyday life in a variety of ways that do not depend on artistry, aesthetics, or expertise. In this chapter, we focus on precursors to music and dance that are evident in infancy: the underlying perceptual abilities, parent-infant musical interactions that are motivated by nonmusical goals, the consequences of such interactions for mood regulation and social regulation, and the emergence of rudimentary singing and rhythmic movement to music. These precursors to music and dance lay the groundwork for our informal engagement with music throughout life and its continuing effects on mood regulation, affiliation, and well-being.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Jan 7, 2018
Infants typically experience music through social interactions with others. One such experience i... more Infants typically experience music through social interactions with others. One such experience involves caregivers singing to infants while holding and bouncing them rhythmically. These highly social interactions shape infant music perception and may also influence social cognition and behavior. Moving in time with others-interpersonal synchrony-can direct infants' social preferences and prosocial behavior. Infants also show social preferences and selective prosociality toward singers of familiar, socially learned melodies. Here, we discuss recent studies of the influence of musical engagement on infant social cognition and behavior, highlighting the importance of rhythmic movement and socially relevant melodies.
The present study explored the singing ability of toddlers 16 months to 3 years of age by examini... more The present study explored the singing ability of toddlers 16 months to 3 years of age by examining North American adults’ ability to identify toddlers’ renditions of familiar tunes sung with foreign lyrics. After listening to each toddler’s song, half with familiar melodies and half with unfamiliar melodies, adults attempted to name the songs. Their identification was highly accurate, refuting the prevailing view that toddlers focus on words at the expense of tunes. The singing range of these non-English-speaking toddlers and that of their English-speaking counterparts approximated the pitch range of the target songs, which is inconsistent with the reportedly small singing range of toddlers. Toddlers’ apparent singing proficiency in the present context may stem from the use of home-based recordings and child-selected songs.
Western music is characterized primarily by simple meters, but a number of other musical cultures... more Western music is characterized primarily by simple meters, but a number of other musical cultures, including Turkish, have both simple and complex meters. In Experiment 1, Turkish and American adults with and without musical training were asked to detect metrical changes in Turkish music with simple and complex meter. Musicians performed significantly better than nonmusicians, and performance was significantly better on simple meter than on complex meter, but Turkish listeners performed no differently than American listeners. In Experiment 2, members of Turkish classical and folk music clubs who were tested on the same materials exhibited comparable sensitivity to simple and complex meters, unlike the American and Turkish listeners in Experiment 1. Together, the findings reveal important effects of musical training and culture on meter perception: trained musicians are generally more sensitive than nonmusicians, regardless of metrical complexity, but sensitivity to complex meter req...
This study investigates the oral gestures of 8-month-old infants in response to audiovisual prese... more This study investigates the oral gestures of 8-month-old infants in response to audiovisual presentation of lip and tongue smacks. Infants exhibited more lip gestures than tongue gestures following adult lip smacks and more tongue gestures than lip gestures following adult tongue smacks. The findings, which are consistent with predictions from Articulatory Phonology, imply that 8-month-old infants are capable of producing goal-directed oral gestures by matching the articulatory organ of an adult model.
Background Individual differences in infants’ responses in the laboratory have begun to receive s... more Background Individual differences in infants’ responses in the laboratory have begun to receive some attention in the field of infant research, with clear evidence for differences due to temperament, attentional style, and more variable factors such as mood and arousal. Studies of infants’ responses to music, however, have not systematically tackled individual differences or variability in responses. Aims This study examines the stability of infants’ music preferences over repeated testing, comparing infants’ responses to music and to other stimuli and test situations, and explores these in relation to individual differences (temperament, gender, and state). Method 38 infants aged 7m16d to 8m21d at the outset (mean 8m) participated in the study, including 22 girls and 16 boys. Background information was collected on the family, music experiences, and infant temperament (using Rothbart’s Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised, 2000). Infants participated in four experimental tasks in a soundproofed booth with their caregivers: a book interaction, a visual attention task, a music preference task using the preferential looking technique, and a novel toy interaction. All participants were tested twice, one week apart, and if willing (n=23) were tested twice again, each time separated by a week. All sessions were video recorded. Results General testability and responses to the visual attention task were highly consistent within individual infants from session to session. Music preferences were less consistent, however, with infants seemingly changing their minds about whether they preferred to listen to calming or arousing music on subsequent visits. The general level of testability had no bearing on the variance in any of the other tasks, however, suggesting that good data can be gathered from infants if they are able to undergo the experimental procedures. Conclusions Further data analysis is focusing on the short-term effects of mood and arousal and daily routines on individual infants’ music choices, as well as addressing the effects of individual pieces of music. In addition microanalysis of the infants’ behaviour during the experimental sessions may shed light on the variability observed in response to music. Adults engage with music in highly context-specific ways and preliminary analysis suggests that infants’ behaviour is similar.
Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance, Aug 28, 2016
Previous research reveals that vocal melodies are remembered better than instrumental renditions.... more Previous research reveals that vocal melodies are remembered better than instrumental renditions. Here we explored the possibility that the voice, as a highly salient stimulus, elicits greater arousal than nonvocal stimuli, resulting in greater pupil dilation for vocal than for instrumental melodies. We also explored the possibility that pupil dilation indexes memory for melodies. We tracked pupil dilation during a single exposure to 24 unfamiliar folk melodies (half sung to la la, half piano) and during a subsequent recognition test in which the previously heard melodies were intermixed with 24 novel melodies (half sung, half piano) from the same corpus. Pupil dilation was greater for vocal melodies than for piano melodies in the exposure phase and in the test phase. It was also greater for previously heard melodies than for novel melodies. Our findings provide the first evidence that pupillometry can be used to measure recognition of stimuli that unfold over several seconds. They ...
The infant's environment is filled with musical input. Mothers’ speech to infants is music-li... more The infant's environment is filled with musical input. Mothers’ speech to infants is music-like, exhibiting a variety of musical features that reflect its emotional expressiveness. Although this speech has similar melodic contours across cultures, which reflect comparable expressive intentions, each mother has individually distinctive interval patterns or speech tunes. Mothers also sing to infants in an emotive manner, their repeated performances being unusually stable in pitch and tempo. Infants prefer affectively positive speech to affectively neutral speech, and they prefer infant-directed performances of songs to other performances. When infants are presented with audio-visual versions of their mother's speech and singing, they exhibit more sustained interest in the singing than in the speech episodes. Finally, live maternal singing has more sustained effects on infant arousal than does live maternal speech. We discuss the implications of these findings and suggest direc...
The study of infant music perception began in the 1970s—a time when young infants were considered... more The study of infant music perception began in the 1970s—a time when young infants were considered incapable of holistic processing of auditory sequences. These limitations were reconsidered with the demonstration of infants’ configural processing of pitch and timing patterns, which presaged the vibrant field of study that unfolded over subsequent decades. The 1980s revealed the salience of melodic contour for infants as well as adult-like processing of pitch and timing patterns. The 1990s shed new light on intervals and scales, uncovering situations in which infant listeners outperformed their adult counterparts. Scholars in the new millennium have documented a number of factors that influence rhythm perception in infancy, including incidental exposure to music and the experience of movement during music listening. In addition, brain-based measures are shedding light on the musical sensitivities of newborn infants. In sum, the conception of infants vis-à-vis music has changed substa...
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of a single theoretically important phenomenon and (b) examining methodological, cultural, and developmental moderators. We focus on infants’ preference for infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS). Stimuli of mothers speaking to their infants and to an adult in North American English were created using seminaturalistic
laboratory-based audio recordings. Infants’ relative preference for IDS and ADS was assessed across 67 laboratories in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia using the three common methods for measuring infants’ discrimination (head-turn preference, central fixation, and eye tracking). The overall meta-analytic effect size (Cohen’s d) was 0.35,
95% confidence interval = [0.29, 0.42], which was reliably above zero but smaller than the meta-analytic mean computed from previous literature (0.67). The IDS preference was significantly stronger in older children, in those children for whom the stimuli matched their native language and dialect, and in data from labs using the head-turn preference
procedure. Together, these findings replicate the IDS preference but suggest that its magnitude is modulated by development, native-language experience, and testing procedure.
of a single theoretically important phenomenon and (b) examining methodological, cultural, and developmental moderators. We focus on infants’ preference for infant-directed speech (IDS) over adult-directed speech (ADS). Stimuli of mothers speaking to their infants and to an adult in North American English were created using seminaturalistic
laboratory-based audio recordings. Infants’ relative preference for IDS and ADS was assessed across 67 laboratories in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia using the three common methods for measuring infants’ discrimination (head-turn preference, central fixation, and eye tracking). The overall meta-analytic effect size (Cohen’s d) was 0.35,
95% confidence interval = [0.29, 0.42], which was reliably above zero but smaller than the meta-analytic mean computed from previous literature (0.67). The IDS preference was significantly stronger in older children, in those children for whom the stimuli matched their native language and dialect, and in data from labs using the head-turn preference
procedure. Together, these findings replicate the IDS preference but suggest that its magnitude is modulated by development, native-language experience, and testing procedure.