Parents’ songs as regulators of parent and infant emotions

• In Event: 3-221 - The social and emotional significance of early shared musical experiences

Integrative Statement

Caregivers around the world sing to infants to regulate their arousal and mood (Trehub & Gudmundsdottir, 2015). Such social, multimodal interactions set the stage for our life-long social engagement with music. Primary caregivers use songs for playful, face-to-face engagement with alert infants, for soothing interactions aimed at inducing sleep in infants, and for distracting and bringing cheer to distressed infants. The available evidence supports the efficacy of these strategies in regulating infant arousal and behavior and also in modulating parental arousal. For example, a recent study found that playful maternal song captures and maintains infants’ engagement with mother, whereas soothing maternal song reduces infants’ arousal and engagement while also reducing maternal arousal (Cirelli, Jurewicz, & Trehub, submitted). Even audio-recordings of infant-directed song are more effective than infant-directed speech in maintaining infants’ composure and delaying the onset of distress (Corbeil, Trehub, & Peretz, 2016). Ghazban’s (2013) dissertation research, which used a more ecologically valid context and materials, revealed that maternal song was more effective than maternal speech in reducing the distress of 10-month-old infants. The present study examined the relative effectiveness of parents’ multimodal speech and song in modulating the arousal levels of younger infants (n = 28 dyads, infant age range = 7.5 to 8.5 months) and their parents. Three trials of still-face procedure were implemented, each involving a play phase, still-face phase (with unresponsive parent), and reunion phase (responsive singing or talking parent). After the stress-induction (still-face) phase, which led to increased infant arousal and overt signals of distress, parents attempted to reduce that distress through a multimodal interaction that included 1) singing a highly familiar song, 2) singing an unfamiliar song, or 3) talking but no singing (order counterbalanced across dyads). Parent and infant behavior and arousal (i.e., skin conductivity) were recorded continuously. There was a significant interaction between reunion type and time on infant skin conductance level, p < .05. Following the still-face manipulation, infant skin conductance level and distress continued to increase during the speech reunion. In contrast, the singing reunion, whether it involved familiar or unfamiliar songs, stabilized infant arousal and reduced overt signs of distress (e.g., negative vocalizations). The distinctive effects of singing were most pronounced for infants who were slow to recover from distress in their daily lives, as indicated by independent parent-report measures. There is also a significant interaction between reunion type and time for parental skin conductance levels, p < .01, which continued to increase during the speech reunion, decreasing only during the musical reunions. These data suggest that parental songs, whether familiar or unfamiliar to infants, are more effective than parental speech at modulating infant arousal and distress. Singing also has favorable effects on parents’ arousal, perhaps as a direct consequence of singing as well as an indirect consequence of its salutary effects on infants.

Authors

• Laura Cirelli, University of Toronto Scarborough
  Presenting Author

• Sandra Trehub, University of Toronto Mississauga
  Non-Presenting Author