2025/05/28 by Eun Cho, Lidya Yurdum, Ekanem Ebinne +8 · 2 voices
Health Professions · Medicine · Psychology · #Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development #Clinical psychology #Developmental psychology #Infant Development and Preterm Care #Infant Health and Development #Intervention (counseling) #Medicine #Mood #Psychiatry #Psychological intervention #Psychology #Randomized controlled trial #Singing
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/cdev.14246
openalex publication_date 2025/05/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Abstract Music appears universally in human infancy with self-evident effects: as many parents know intuitively, infants love to be sung to. The long-term effects of parental singing remain unclear, however. In an offset-design exploratory 10-week randomized trial conducted in 2023 (110 families of young infants, Mage = 3.67 months, 53% female, 73% White), the study manipulated the frequency of infant-directed singing via a music enrichment intervention. Results, measured by smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment (EMA), show that infant-directed singing causes general post-intervention improvements to infant mood, but not to caregiver mood. The findings show the feasibility of longitudinal EMA (retention: 92%; EMA response rate: 74%) of infants and the potential of longer-term and higher-intensity music enrichment interventions to improve health in infancy.