Summary: Singing to an infant supports social development and interaction, new research finds.
Source: Vanderbilt University
New research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that caregivers’ singing helps structure infant attention and social engagement, providing a natural mechanism for early social development.
A collaborative team from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Marcus Autism Center, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, and Emory University School of Medicine enrolled 112 infants, tested at either 2 months or 6 months of age. Using precise eye-tracking technology, the researchers recorded infants’ eye movements as they watched videos of people singing directly to them.
The analysis revealed that the steady, predictable rhythm of caregivers’ singing aligns—or entrains—infants’ eye-looking to the singer’s social cues at sub-second timescales. Even at 2 months, when infants are beginning to engage in reciprocal interactions, infants were about twice as likely to direct their gaze to the singer’s eyes in time with the musical beat than would be expected by chance.
By 6 months, when infants have more experience with face-to-face musical play and are developing more complex communicative behaviors such as babbling, the effect was even stronger: infants were more than four times as likely to look to the singer’s eyes synchronized with the musical beats. These findings indicate a rapid developmental increase in rhythmic sensitivity tied to social attention.
“Singing to infants may seem simple, but it carries rich and meaningful social information,” said lead author Miriam Lense, Ph.D., assistant professor of Otolaryngology and co-director of the Music Cognition Lab at Vanderbilt. “Caregivers intuitively structure their behavior—through timing, rhythm, and predictable pulses—to support bonding and early social learning.”
To isolate infant-driven behavior from adult adjustments, researchers presented video recordings of singing rather than live interaction. This ensured that any systematic change in where and when infants looked was due to the infants’ responses to the recorded rhythmic cues, not to a live singer adapting in the moment. Infants were free to look anywhere on the screen, yet their gaze patterns consistently synchronized with the musical pulse in the predictable videos.
The team also tested the importance of rhythmic predictability by creating manipulated versions of the videos in which the timing of the singing was jittered and no longer regular. When the rhythm was experimentally disrupted, infants no longer showed time-locked eye-looking to the singer’s eyes. This contrast confirms that rhythmic predictability—the steady beat of song—is a critical mechanism for entraining infant attention and structuring social exchanges.
“This work reveals a remarkable physical coupling between caregiver behavior and infant experience,” said Warren Jones, Ph.D., senior author and Nien Distinguished Chair in Autism at Emory University School of Medicine. “Without conscious awareness, a caregiver’s simple, intuitive singing triggers a cascade of behaviors that shape how infants experience social interaction.”
Reyna Gordon, Ph.D., associate professor of Otolaryngology and co-director of the Music Cognition Lab at Vanderbilt, noted that making music in early life is more than entertainment: it is a central component of socio-emotional development. “Infants essentially track the beat with their eyes, modulating eye contact around the pulse of the music,” she said. “These results advance our understanding of how young children are sensitive to musical rhythm and how this sensitivity supports early social engagement.”
The study was supported by several institutes within the National Institutes of Health—the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, and the National Institute for Deafness and Communication Disorders—as well as by the GRAMMY Foundation.
Looking ahead, Lense and colleagues have extended this line of research to investigate rhythmic synchronization in autism as part of the Sound Health Initiative, a partnership between the NIH and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in association with the National Endowment for the Arts. These follow-up studies aim to explore how rhythmic entrainment contributes to social communication and whether musical timing can inform new approaches to developmental support.
About this social development and music research news
Author: Press Office
Source: Vanderbilt University
Contact: Press Office – Vanderbilt University
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Findings published in PNAS