While the vast majority of us have sung lullabies to our children when they needed a little reassurance at bed time, how many of us can say they always work?
Well, whether your own child responds positively to your gentle rendition of Twinkly Twinkle or not, it appears scientists in Canada have established that, in general terms, infants are more swiftly placated by music than the spoken word.
Conducting two experiments into the influence lullabies can have on babies, researchers from the University of Montreal and the University of Toronto Mississauga, established that whether or not the child is familiar with a particular language, they will respond more positively to it in music.
In the first experiment, researchers exposed the infants to recordings of speech (some baby talk and some normal adult speech) as well as songs in Turkish, an unfamiliar language to the infants.
The second experiment saw the same approach, but this time they infants listened to the recordings in French, a language with which they were familiar.
On both occasions, the children, whose parents were seated behind them, responded more positively and displayed a calmer demeanour when listening to the musical recordings in both Turkish and French.
Commenting on the findings, co-author of the study, Isabelle Peretz, of the University of Montreal said: “Even in the relatively sterile environment of the testing room - black walls, dim illumination, no toys, and no human visual or tactile stimulation - the sound of a woman singing prolonged infants’ positive or neutral states and inhibited distress.”
Explaining the importance of the findings, she continued: “These findings speak to the intrinsic importance of music, and of nursery rhymes in particular, which appeal to our desire for simplicity, and repetition.”
The study has been published in the journal Infancy.
