Challenging infant-directed singing as a credible signal of maternal attention

Trehub, Sandra E.

doi:10.1017/s0140525x20001442

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 992 publications

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“…These acoustic dissociations comport with functional dissociations, with speech being more attention-grabbing, the better to distract from baby’s fussiness 37,38 ; and song being more soothing, the better to lower baby’s arousal 32,33,41–43,45,81 . Speech and song are both capable of playful or soothing roles 62 but each here tended toward one acoustic profile over the other, despite both types of vocalization being elicited here in the same context: vocalizations used “when the baby is fussy”.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…The evidentiary basis for such a claim is controversial, however, given the limited generalizability of individual ethnographic reports and laboratory studies 53 ; small stimulus sets 54 ; and a variety of counterexamples 55,56,[58][59][60][61][62] . Some evidence suggests that infant-directed speech is primarily characterized by higher and more variable pitch 63 and more exaggerated and variable vowels 23,64,65 , based on studies in modern industrialized societies 23,28,49,50,52,66,67 and a few small-scale societies 51,68 .…”

Section: Mainmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These theories predict a form-function link in infant-directed vocalizations, with consistent acoustic differences between infant-directed and adult-directed vocalizations across cultures. Some evidence supports this prediction 23,27,28,32,[49][50][51][52] , but the limited generalizability of individual ethnographic reports and laboratory experiments 53 and small stimulus sets 54 , along with intriguing reports of counterexamples [55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62] , leave the question open. Here, we show that people alter the acoustic forms of their vocalizations in a consistent fashion across cultures when speaking or singing to infants.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Acoustic regularities in infant-directed speech and song across cultures

Hilton

Moser

Bertolo

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Humans often produce vocalizations for infants that differ from vocalizations for adults. Is this property common across societies? The forms of infant-directed vocalizations may be shaped by their function in parent-infant communication. If so, infant-directed song and speech should be differentiable from adult-directed song and speech on the basis of their acoustic features, and this property should be relatively invariant across cultures. To test this hypothesis, we built a corpus of 1,614 recordings of infant-and adult-directed singing and speech produced by 411 people living in 21 urban, rural, and small-scale societies. We studied the corpus in a massive online experiment and in a series of acoustic analyses. Naïve listeners (N = 13,218) reliably identified infant-directed vocalizations as infant-directed, and adult-directed speech (but not songs) as adult-directed, at rates far higher than chance. Ratings of infant-directed song were the most accurate and the most consistent across all societies; infant-directed speech was accurately identified on average, but inconsistently across societies. To determine the mechanisms underlying these results, we extracted many acoustic features from each recording and identified those that most reliably characterize infant-directed song and speech across cultures, via preregistered exploratory-confirmatory analyses and machine classification. The features distinguishing infant-and adult-directed song and speech concerned pitch, rhythmic, phonetic, and timbral attributes; a hypothesis-free classifier with cross-validation across societies reliably identified all vocalization types, with highest accuracy for infant-directed song. Last, we isolated 12 acoustic features that were predictive of perceived infant-directedness; of these, two pitch attributes (median F0 and its variability) were by far the most explanatory. These findings demonstrate cross-cultural regularities in infant-directed vocalizations that are suggestive of universality; moreover, infant-directed song appears to be more cross-culturally stereotyped than infant-directed speech, informing hypotheses of the functions and evolution of both.The forms of many animal signals are shaped by their functions, a link arising from production-and reception-2 related rules that help to maintain reliable signal detection within and across species 1-6 . This is especially 3 true of vocal signals, where form-function links have been demonstrated across many species, including 4 nonhuman primates 3 , meerkats 7 , grackles 8 , frogs 9 , and fish 10 . 5The link between form and function in vocalizations is also evident from listeners' behavior. For example, 6 humans 11 , red deer 12 , and canines 13 reliably detect the intentions of heterospecific signalers on the basis of 7 the sounds of their signals. A classic demonstration of this fact is the ability of some species to eavesdrop 8 on the alarm signals of other species, whether or not their own species has an extended vocal repertoire 14,15 . 9 In humans, an area of...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

Section: Mainmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Acoustic regularities in infant-directed speech and song across cultures

Hilton

Moser

Bertolo

et al. 2020

Preprint

Self Cite

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“…As recently pointed out by Trehub (2021), the credible signaling of parental attention theory is challenged by childcare features among contemporary foraging cultures, where prolonged breastfeeding entails prolonged interbirth intervals and infants are continuously carried by their mothers. Moreover, cross-cultural data indicate that the most frequent strategies employed by mothers for soothing distressed children are picking up, rocking, and talking to the infant rather than song (Bornstein et al, 2017;Richter & Ostovar, 2016).…”

Section: Mother-infant Interaction As the Primordial Context Of Proto...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Natural History of Musical Rhythm: Functional and Mechanistic Theories on the Evolution of Human Rhythm Cognition and the Relevance of Rhythmic Animal Behaviors

Sauciuc¹,

Persson²,

Madsen³

2022

CCBR

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Recently, interest has been growing in investigating rhythm cognition and behavior in nonhuman animals as a way of tracking the evolutionary origins of human musicality-that is, the ability to perceive, enjoy, and produce music. During the past 2 decades, an explosion of theoretical proposals have aimed at explaining why and how humans have evolved into musical beings, and the empirical comparative research has gained momentum. In this article, we focus on the rhythmic component of musicality and review functional and mechanistic theoretical proposals concerning putative prerequisites for perceiving and producing rhythmic structures similar to those encountered in music. For each theoretical proposal, we also review supporting and contradictory empirical findings. To acknowledge that the evolutionary study of musicality requires an interdisciplinary approach, our review strives to cover perspectives and findings from as many disciplines as possible. We conclude with a research agenda that highlights relevant, yet thus far neglected, topics in the comparative and evolutionary study of rhythm cognition. Specifically, we call for a widened research focus that will include additional rhythmic abilities besides entrainment, additional channels of perception and production besides the auditory and vocal ones, and a systematic focus on the functional contexts in which rhythmic signals spontaneously occur. With this expanded focus, and drawing from systematic observation and experimentation anchored in multiple disciplines, animal research is bound to generate many important insights into the adaptive pressures that forged the component abilities of human rhythm cognition and their (socio)cognitive and (neuro)biological underpinnings.

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“…In all cultures it would seem, parents sing with their babies. This is most likely to have begun in the distant past with communities carrying their infants whilst foraging, as a way of giving attention to their babies in a multimodal way, the singing synchronising with the rhythmic movements (Trehub, 2021). Contemporary cultures have lullabies and children's songs which have often been handed down through the generations, and, as with any oral tradition, become slightly altered with each sharing.…”

Section: Singing Mattersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Babysong revisited: communication with babies through song

Young

Goouch

Powell

2022

Brit. J. Music. Ed.

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The Babysong Project arose out of the Baby Room Project and its aims included supporting baby room practitioners to develop ‘communicative musicality’ (Malloch & Trevarthen 2009), extending research knowledge about baby room practices and helping practitioners to explore opportunities to question and adapt their own ways of working with babies in their care. Six years on, we reflect on the project and consider the significance and sustainability of what might have been achieved. We also probe whether there are further areas for development. We conclude that while there were many positive outcomes, we recognise the challenges of sustaining and nurturing the confidence of practitioners and the desirability of addressing the organisational aspects of the initiative to promote the embedding of practice. There is a real necessity for such projects, often involving radical challenges to previously held attitudes and practices, to be funded over longer periods of time. We also acknowledge the rich, untapped potential of using song to connect with families and carers.

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Challenging infant-directed singing as a credible signal of maternal attention

Cited by 6 publications

References 992 publications

Acoustic regularities in infant-directed speech and song across cultures

Acoustic regularities in infant-directed speech and song across cultures

The Natural History of Musical Rhythm: Functional and Mechanistic Theories on the Evolution of Human Rhythm Cognition and the Relevance of Rhythmic Animal Behaviors

Babysong revisited: communication with babies through song

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