Researchers from the University of Dussledorf adapted a questionnaire devised by Middlesex University’s Music and Cognition Communication Lab, measuring informal musical interactions with young children and babies in the home environment.
In a sample of more than 600 German parents and carers, a link was established between language skills at two years of age and musical engagement. The research paper concluded that ‘higher scores on the Music@Home questionnaire were associated with better language skills in two-year-olds’.
Co-author Dr Nina Politimou, a former PhD student at Middlesex, said, ‘This is very important because it will allow new studies to be conducted using this tool and therefore measure this kind of experience in very early development.’
She added, ‘Language development in toddlers is already affected by the education of the parents, the kind of input they get, so much so that by the time children are four they can be already lagging behind in school. This kind of work will hopefully offer recommendations about what caregivers can do to further support the development of language in their children.’
Commenting on the link between early language development and musical engagement, co-author Dr Fabia Franco, a senior lecturer in psychology at Middlesex University, said, ‘If you give babies a choice between listening to someone speaking or singing to them, they will pay more attention to the song. This suggests that there is more attention given in musical context.
'If you pay more attention to something, then you are more likely to process the content. Thus it is possible that music has some facilitating aspect because it has a regular beat which allows you to build a predicting structure so you know where it is going.’
‘Songs may then demand less cognitive effort when it comes to processing the linguistic content.’
Questions in the questionnaire included ‘I sing with my child everyday’, on a scale from 7 (Strongly Agree) to 1 (Strongly Disagree), while 217 parents of two- and three-year-olds also completed a report on language development, in which they were asked about what kinds of words their children might understand.
The Music@Home questionnaire was adapted from English to German and was given to 656 caregivers - 616 mothers and 40 fathers - of infants and pre-schoolers.
In May last year, Middlesex University researchers published a study in Frontiers in Psychology, which provided compelling and novel evidence about associations between musical skills and language development in pre-schoolers.
The Music@Home research in Germany was co-authored by Dr Franco from Middlesex University, Dr Nora K Schaal from Heinrich-Heine-University in Dusseldorf, Germany, Dr Nina Politimou from the University College of London and Birkbeck University, Dr Lauren Stewart from Goldsmith University and Dr Daniel Müllensiefen from the University of Music, Drama and Media in Hanover, Germany.
- You can read the paper here
- Find out more about the work of the MCC Lab
