The article notes that the babies are with their mothers most of the time, so they're probably exposed to plenty of language even if it not specifically aimed at them.
My parents were deaf, so there wasn't much singing to me when I was a baby. But I managed to pick up spoken language anyhow so I doubt that singing is vital as the headline suggests.
Generally as long as babies aren't deprived or abused when they are young, they'll grow up fine.
The amount of vocabulary that is learned through the experience and play of song is astounding. Similar to a song tied to a memory. Exposure to diverse cuisine and music before birth both seems to be helpful too to the degree possible.
The number of words I have seen the little ones in my life absorb and use before age 1.5 to 3 leaves you a little speechless.
So many words, syllables, full sentences, and a way to reduce some of the little frustrations of not being able to express yourself.
So many words seem to musically originating in a few ways in hind sight:
First is reading, talking and singing anything you can as much as one can. Learning the sound of the voices around them is super valuable if present from the start.
Next is ending up being children of the digital co-parent and teacher Miss Rachel. Her content on YouTube was irreplaceable during the pandemic, and the bonus of speaking in song was one of the biggest gifts to learn.
Last, but not least is a Reggio Emilia child development / care program. If a parent has a chance to check out a Reggio Emilia centric child care program in regards to this topic of learning expression, more than not it’s an invitation to explore and play with lots of music and vocabulary. What’s neat is no place can be Reggio Emilia certified because it’s a town in Italy, so the methods can be freely taught, learned and used at home too.
What stands out is all of the children in Reggio Emilia programs are not the same, they are very ok with structure but just as adaptable with going with the flow of the fire alarm goes off. The rigour in fuelling music, dance, craft, curiosity, imagination, exploration, interaction and expression.
There will be some parents who find this approach a fit for them, (it’s a little different than Montessori which can be tough for some children to switch into a regular world program) as it focuses on helping each child bring out their uniqueness at their own pace.
I just sang, sang, sang anything that came to my mind. About mountains, clouds, courage, poo… It was just love pouring out of my heart, and I don’t know if it had something to do with it, but my kid started talking very early on and very well.
The best thing is was that I got to know him very soon, while my peers and their daughters/sons still were kind of communicating.
It seems to vary a lot in my experience. I have two kids who basically got the same treatment. One was eloquently talking in coherent sentences of 4 or 5 words by 18 months ("plane in the sky", "teddy come downstairs", "want something to eat" etc) and was understandable by others outside the family, the other kid was barely able to grunt single words at the same age ("mukk" instead of milk, "nur-sa" instead of nursery etc) that only we really understood as it was just incomprehensible sounds to everyone else
Singing made fuck all difference in that case (FWIW, the grunter is now totally fine as an older kid). Both were walking at 10 months so it was not like one was just "slow" at their milestones
We talked constantly to ours. Not about anything in particular. Just narrating everything we did. Constantly.
Our oldest was talking in full sentences at 1 year. It was astounding. Now, granted, it was stuff like, "I'm dunna det da fwad" but he was communicating in full thoughts at about the time he walked.
People always asked what system we used for teaching him. Our answer was always, "it's boring at our house so we talk a lot."
According to the article it would seem to be a matter of just throwing in as much variety of tone, inflection, and articulation as you can manage. The don't understand what you're saying anyway.
My career as a singer-to-babies was heavy on the Broadway tunes. "On the Street Where You Live" was big.
Or not. I can sing but all my kids hated it. On the other hand, I always spoke to them using non-baby language, humor, and mannerisms, and they turned out to be incredibly good communicators.
Perhaps because they were highly, highly experimental, the early little kids' edutainment shows, like Sesame Street and Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, just struck me as much better because they didn't insult children's intelligence, spoke to them as full persons, and had relatively rich and complex imagery, music, story, and humor. Which is why they're so watchable and beloved by adults.
And then Elmo happened and then Barney happened, and things have been on kind of a downhill slide into brightly colored, C-major MIDI music Cocomelon happyland.
That it's easier to learn via a song is quite obvious to me. I used to compose and record songs for poems I had to memorize in school, and not only those were the only ones I memorized with ease - those are also the ones I still remember today.
> Infants understand language via rhythm and tone rather than individual sounds
I feel this must explain something about the Pingu stop-motion animations, which feature a made-up babble-language that some people think is real-but-foreign.
I've been doing that as well as beatboxing (inward bass, subharmonics). The baby is seemingly trying to replicate some of it, but obviously they're not word-like sounds.
"Even prior to producing their first words, infants are developing a sophisticated speech processing system, with robust word recognition present by 4–6 months of age. These emergent linguistic skills, observed with behavioural investigations, are likely to rely on increasingly sophisticated neural underpinnings. The infant brain is known to robustly track the speech envelope, however previous cortical tracking studies were unable to demonstrate the presence of phonetic feature encoding. Here we utilise temporal response functions computed from electrophysiological responses to nursery rhymes to investigate the cortical encoding of phonetic features in a longitudinal cohort of infants when aged 4, 7 and 11 months, as well as adults. The analyses reveal an increasingly detailed and acoustically invariant phonetic encoding emerging over the first year of life, providing neurophysiological evidence that the pre-verbal human cortex learns phonetic categories. By contrast, we found no credible evidence for age-related increases in cortical tracking of the acoustic spectrogram."
Yeah the quote from the researcher is “Parents should talk and sing to their babies as much as possible or use infant-directed speech like nursery rhymes because it will make a difference to language outcome.”
Which, you know, sure, why not. Nursery rhymes are, I'm sure, great. But the idea that it is "vital" seems preposterous, as I'm sure many infants do not have anyone singing to them, and they still learn to speak.
Again, I'm sure singing to your baby is good stuff, but the headline seems like a stretch.
That's just the title. Which is normal. The article itself is quite reasonable.
That being said it could very much be vital. That is a valid possibility. We simply don't have enough information yet to verify a causal connection. But we do have enough data to verify the possibility of one.
gnicholas|2 years ago
1: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/parents-in-a-remo...
crooked-v|2 years ago
earlygray|2 years ago
j45|2 years ago
The amount of vocabulary that is learned through the experience and play of song is astounding. Similar to a song tied to a memory. Exposure to diverse cuisine and music before birth both seems to be helpful too to the degree possible.
The number of words I have seen the little ones in my life absorb and use before age 1.5 to 3 leaves you a little speechless.
So many words, syllables, full sentences, and a way to reduce some of the little frustrations of not being able to express yourself.
So many words seem to musically originating in a few ways in hind sight:
First is reading, talking and singing anything you can as much as one can. Learning the sound of the voices around them is super valuable if present from the start.
Next is ending up being children of the digital co-parent and teacher Miss Rachel. Her content on YouTube was irreplaceable during the pandemic, and the bonus of speaking in song was one of the biggest gifts to learn.
Last, but not least is a Reggio Emilia child development / care program. If a parent has a chance to check out a Reggio Emilia centric child care program in regards to this topic of learning expression, more than not it’s an invitation to explore and play with lots of music and vocabulary. What’s neat is no place can be Reggio Emilia certified because it’s a town in Italy, so the methods can be freely taught, learned and used at home too.
What stands out is all of the children in Reggio Emilia programs are not the same, they are very ok with structure but just as adaptable with going with the flow of the fire alarm goes off. The rigour in fuelling music, dance, craft, curiosity, imagination, exploration, interaction and expression.
There will be some parents who find this approach a fit for them, (it’s a little different than Montessori which can be tough for some children to switch into a regular world program) as it focuses on helping each child bring out their uniqueness at their own pace.
dzolob|2 years ago
The best thing is was that I got to know him very soon, while my peers and their daughters/sons still were kind of communicating.
mattlondon|2 years ago
Singing made fuck all difference in that case (FWIW, the grunter is now totally fine as an older kid). Both were walking at 10 months so it was not like one was just "slow" at their milestones
As they say, every baby is different.
Loughla|2 years ago
Our oldest was talking in full sentences at 1 year. It was astounding. Now, granted, it was stuff like, "I'm dunna det da fwad" but he was communicating in full thoughts at about the time he walked.
People always asked what system we used for teaching him. Our answer was always, "it's boring at our house so we talk a lot."
jeffbee|2 years ago
My career as a singer-to-babies was heavy on the Broadway tunes. "On the Street Where You Live" was big.
starcraft2wol|2 years ago
tomcam|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
dymk|2 years ago
zagrebian|2 years ago
bitwize|2 years ago
And then Elmo happened and then Barney happened, and things have been on kind of a downhill slide into brightly colored, C-major MIDI music Cocomelon happyland.
Loughla|2 years ago
Where many people go wrong is that they assume little kids are stupid instead of understanding that they lack context.
player1234|2 years ago
seba_dos1|2 years ago
markdown|2 years ago
> he communicates by making a rapid clicking noise with his tongue
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jul/11/fiji.jennyfors...
Terr_|2 years ago
I feel this must explain something about the Pingu stop-motion animations, which feature a made-up babble-language that some people think is real-but-foreign.
ceeam|2 years ago
parasti|2 years ago
ipnon|2 years ago
rowyourboat|2 years ago
gardenhedge|2 years ago
ourmandave|2 years ago
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1199392770567826
vr46|2 years ago
* Elmo’s Song
* Feist’s Sesame Street version of 1-2-3-4
lostmsu|2 years ago
tomrod|2 years ago
"I love the flowers I love the daffodils.
"I love the fire side when all the lights are low.
"Boom dee Yada boom dee Yada boom."
corethree|2 years ago
I wonder what's the effect of playing baby songs and exposing the baby to dumbed down versions of everything.
thesausageking|2 years ago
"Even prior to producing their first words, infants are developing a sophisticated speech processing system, with robust word recognition present by 4–6 months of age. These emergent linguistic skills, observed with behavioural investigations, are likely to rely on increasingly sophisticated neural underpinnings. The infant brain is known to robustly track the speech envelope, however previous cortical tracking studies were unable to demonstrate the presence of phonetic feature encoding. Here we utilise temporal response functions computed from electrophysiological responses to nursery rhymes to investigate the cortical encoding of phonetic features in a longitudinal cohort of infants when aged 4, 7 and 11 months, as well as adults. The analyses reveal an increasingly detailed and acoustically invariant phonetic encoding emerging over the first year of life, providing neurophysiological evidence that the pre-verbal human cortex learns phonetic categories. By contrast, we found no credible evidence for age-related increases in cortical tracking of the acoustic spectrogram."
Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-43490-x
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
jncfhnb|2 years ago
nitwit005|2 years ago
dang|2 years ago
rossdavidh|2 years ago
Which, you know, sure, why not. Nursery rhymes are, I'm sure, great. But the idea that it is "vital" seems preposterous, as I'm sure many infants do not have anyone singing to them, and they still learn to speak.
Again, I'm sure singing to your baby is good stuff, but the headline seems like a stretch.
dudul|2 years ago
dang|2 years ago
xkekjrktllss|2 years ago
[deleted]
corethree|2 years ago
That being said it could very much be vital. That is a valid possibility. We simply don't have enough information yet to verify a causal connection. But we do have enough data to verify the possibility of one.