[HN Gopher] Singing to babies is vital to help them learn langua...
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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.
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