TRIBUNE
Music, dancing, and playing instruments have been an essential part of our culture for a long time. From the moment babies are born, parents sing to them to calm, appease and engage them. Infant-directed singing focuses the infant’s attention, controls their level of arousal, and eases their suffering.
What most people didn’t know until now is that aside from the rhythm of songs and rhymes ensuring that mothers feel more emotionally connected to their babies, singing to children from a young age has a significant impact on their brain development.
In a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, researchers said singing to babies’ (lullabies) will improve their social interaction across development, becoming detectable at two months and more pronounced by six months.
Children are born with billions of brain cells, also known as neurons. Over the first year of life, these neurons form connections, and the more these connections are used, the stronger they become. One of the ways to work out and strengthen these connections is music.
In fact, songs with actions in them are especially good because babies can join in with them by moving their body or doing the actions like clapping, or opening and closing their hands, long before they can sing along. They gradually learn to do more complicated actions as they grow and develop.
In the present study, researchers evaluated whether infant-directed singing’s rhythm impacted infants’ visual attention in 56 two-month and 56 six-month-old infants.
Audiovisual (AV) recordings of infant-directed singing were employed. The speed, amplitude, and pitch of nursery rhymes like “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” and “Old MacDonald” with naturally occurring variations were performed by amateur singers. A total of nine AV recordings were utilised, with each recording lasting almost 24 seconds.
Eye-tracking technology (ISCAN) was employed to measure infants’ visual scanning. Also, measured was the timing of synchronised responses of the infant and the caregiver as well as extent of newborn singing rhythms synchronising with eye movements.
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