Adolescents and adults commonly use music for various forms of affect regulation, including relaxation, revitalization, distraction, and elicitation of pleasant memories. Mothers throughout the world also sing to their infants, with affect regulation as the principal goal. To date, the study of maternal singing has focused largely on its acoustic features and its consequences for infant attention. We describe recent laboratory research that explores the consequences of singing for infant affect regulation. Such work reveals that listening to recordings of play songs can maintain 6- to 9-month-old infants in a relatively contented or neutral state considerably longer than recordings of infant-directed or adult-directed speech. When 10-month-old infants fuss or cry and are highly aroused, mothers' multimodal singing is more effective than maternal speech at inducing recovery from such distress. Moreover, play songs are more effective than lullabies at reducing arousal in Western infants. We explore the implications of these findings along with possible practical applications.

The interaction between a mother and her infant has been described as an intricate ‘dance’ involving coordinated singing and movement (Feldman, 2007). It is widely accepted that infant-directed (ID) speech, characterized as having higher pitch, slower tempo, and exaggerated intonation, is an effective means of communicating with infants and holding their attention (Papousek et al., 1985). Singing is another universally observed caregiving behaviour. Mothers across cultures intuitively use infant-directed (ID) singing to regulate their infants’ emotional state (de l’Etoile, 2006; Nakata & Trehub, 2004). While ID speech and singing appear to be equally successful in regulating infants’ attention (Corbeil, et al., 2013), their effects in modulating infants’ distress are less clear. More precisely, while stress and arousal are intimately connected, there is no research to date that has investigated the efficacy of speech and singing in alleviating infant distress. Using a modified version of the Face-to-Face/Still-Face (FFSF) paradigm (Tronick et al., 1978), the current study is the first to examine 10-month-old infants’ behavioural and physiological responses, via Skin Conductance (SC), to their mother’s singing and speaking. Stress was effectively induced in the still-face episode with infants exhibiting typical “still-face” behaviours and elevated SC responses. The results indicated that in the reunion episode, mother’s singing was more effective in decreasing infant’s physiological arousal, regulating negative affect and promoting infants’ visual attention in comparison to maternal speaking. However, the genre of songs selected (e.g., play song or lullaby) might have been contributed to the positive outcomes of singing in regulating infants’ emotions. Therefore, the second study used the same methodology to examine the effects of maternal play songs and lullabies on infants’ physiological and behavioural responses. The results indicated that maternal play songs were more effective in regulating infants’ stress as well as capturing and maintaining their attention than were soothing lullabies. Taken together, the findings indicate that maternal singing, specifically playful performances, supports infants’ emotions and effectively regulates their stress.

The interaction between a mother and her infant has been described as an intricate ‘dance’ involving coordinated singing and movement (Feldman, 2007). It is widely accepted that infant-directed (ID) speech, characterized as having higher pitch, slower tempo, and exaggerated intonation, is an effective means of communicating with infants and holding their attention (Papousek et al., 1985). Singing is another universally observed caregiving behaviour. Mothers across cultures intuitively use infant-directed (ID) singing to regulate their infants’ emotional state (de l’Etoile, 2006; Nakata & Trehub, 2004). While ID speech and singing appear to be equally successful in regulating infants’ attention (Corbeil, et al., 2013), their effects in modulating infants’ distress are less clear. More precisely, while stress and arousal are intimately connected, there is no research to date that has investigated the efficacy of speech and singing in alleviating infant distress. Using a modified version of the Face-to-Face/Still-Face (FFSF) paradigm (Tronick et al., 1978), the current study is the first to examine 10-month-old infants’ behavioural and physiological responses, via Skin Conductance (SC), to their mother’s singing and speaking. Stress was effectively induced in the still-face episode with infants exhibiting typical “still-face” behaviours and elevated SC responses. The results indicated that in the reunion episode, mother’s singing was more effective in decreasing infant’s physiological arousal, regulating negative affect and promoting infants’ visual attention in comparison to maternal speaking. However, the genre of songs selected (e.g., play song or lullaby) might have been contributed to the positive outcomes of singing in regulating infants’ emotions. Therefore, the second study used the same methodology to examine the effects of maternal play songs and lullabies on infants’ physiological and behavioural responses. The results indicated that maternal play songs were more effective in regulating infants’ stress as well as capturing and maintaining their attention than were soothing lullabies. Taken together, the findings indicate that maternal singing, specifically playful performances, supports infants’ emotions and effectively regulates their stress.

Exploitation of perceptual information by 9.5 month old infants in search tasks

Born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, Jean William Fritz Piaget pioneered the field of cognitive developmental psychology using empirical methods to study children. Like Walter Benjamin, Piaget was one of the few modern thinkers to take children seriously, and his enduring impact is attested by the fact that he is the second most cited psychologist in the twentieth century after Sigmund Freud. A precocious student, who had published his first scientific article at the age of ten, Piaget received his doctorate in zoology at the age of twenty-two.