[HN Gopher] Singing to babies is vital to help them learn langua... ___________________________________________________________________ Singing to babies is vital to help them learn language, say scientists Author : im_dario Score : 90 points Date : 2023-12-02 18:50 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com) | vr46 wrote: | Personal recommendations are: | | * Elmo's Song | | * Feist's Sesame Street version of 1-2-3-4 | corethree wrote: | Maybe more complex songs and songs with big words can make the | baby more articulate. Maybe rap will have other effects. | | I wonder what's the effect of playing baby songs and exposing | the baby to dumbed down versions of everything. | NegativeLatency wrote: | Sounds like some can be unhelpful: https://content.time.com/t | ime/health/article/0,8599,1650352,... | | Although IDK about the quality of this study | jstarfish wrote: | Haven't there been a bunch of studies about this sort of | thing? Lyrics aren't relevant to someone who doesn't | understand language. Voice is just another instrument. | Syllables are just notes. | | Classical music is frequently cited as beneficial to learning | and it has no lyrics. Nobody has ever suggested rap music is | intellectually stimulating in any context, and they use a | _lot_ of words. | | Even on rats in mazes, blasting them with Metallica seems to | result in worse performance than Mozart. Myself, I can't work | while listening to rap, rock or metal. Techno or classical | only. Inducing a state of aggression/heightened arousal never | leads to cogent thought (I can't work to Lords of Acid | either!). There's a reason generals lead from afar. | | I suspect music exposure may be related to autism in | children, as a product of the _spectrum_ of stimulation they | 're exposed to-- too much overall (urban life), too much of | one type (war, domestic violence), or too little of any | ("frigid mother"). The classical arts (a form of _expression_ | ) are another thing that dropped off as diagnoses rose. We do | not value art like we used to. Who owns a piano anymore? | civilitty wrote: | _> Nobody has ever suggested rap music is intellectually | stimulating in any context, and they use a lot of words._ | | You need less DMX and more Wu-Tang [1] | | [1] https://pudding.cool/projects/vocabulary/index.html | lostmsu wrote: | I did the dwarf song (Far over the misty mountains) | tomrod wrote: | "I love the mountains I loved the rolling hills. | | "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." | owenpalmer wrote: | My sisters and I always loved playing the duet of this song | on piano. | thesausageking wrote: | Abstract: | | "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 | ipnon wrote: | This seems to be why people naturally default to sing-song when | speaking to babies. | gardenhedge wrote: | Does it explain why people do that? Are you suggesting we | intrinsically know that singing to a baby is beneficial for | learning? | gumby wrote: | If you believe that speech is a survival skill (which I would | think most people believe) then anything that increases its | prevalence or effectiveness would be evolutionarily selected | for, right? We're talking a 300-500+ Ky period, probably | almost 2X that (depending upon the speech capabilities of our | hominid ancestors), so plenty of time for evolutionary | pressure to apply. | animitronix wrote: | Yes, some shit comes built-in. | dzolob wrote: | 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. | jeffbee wrote: | 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. | ghostpepper wrote: | There is something magical about hearing a toddler mumble out | an entire verse of Fly Me To The Moon or Autumn Leaves | mattlondon wrote: | 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 | | As they say, every baby is different. | tomcam wrote: | 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. | dymk wrote: | Or maybe the scientists who specialize in child development and | linguistics know something you don't | tomcam wrote: | Zany thought! I'm deeply offended you weren't immediately | convinced by my single piece of anecdotal data ;) | ceeam wrote: | But try avoiding death metal growl. | gnicholas wrote: | I wonder how this squares with the research on cultures where | parents scarcely talk to babies, and they turn out fine? [1] | | 1: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/parents-in-a- | remo... | crooked-v wrote: | 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. | gnicholas wrote: | Oh sure, but they're presumably not using sing-song baby | language, or perhaps singing songs all that much. | j45 wrote: | This is 100% my experience. | | 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. | dudul wrote: | "Vital" seems a little strong after reading the article. | jncfhnb wrote: | The actual article simply says babies pick up on phonetic | differences featured in rhyme and song. It says nothing about | being crucial to learning. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-12-02 23:00 UTC)