Playing music to babies improves their response to speech and tunes, study finds
Also in the news: obese women more than double the odds of their child being overweight by age two
Babies who have musical play sessions have improved processing of both music and new speech sounds, according to a study by University of Washington scientists. Music and language have strong rhythmic patterns. The timing of syllables helps listeners define one speech sound from another and understand what someone is saying. The ability to identify differences in speech sounds helps babies to learn to speak.
For the study, 39 nine-month-old babies attended 12 15-minute play sessions with their parents over the course of a month. With the 20 babies assigned to the music group, recordings of children’s music played while the babies and their parents tapped in time with the music. The other 19 babies formed a control group that attended music-free sessions.
Within a week after the sessions, the babies’ brain responses were measured. While being scanned, they listened to a series of music and speech sounds, played out in a rhythm that was occasionally disrupted. Babies in the music group had stronger responses than the non-musical group to
the disruptions in music and speech in the auditory and the prefrontal cortex, which is important for controlling attention and detecting patterns.
A woman who is obese before getting pregnant more than doubles the odds of her child being overweight by age two compared to women with normal pre-pregnancy weight, according to a new study published in Pediatric Obesity.