Babies Remember Melodies Sung to Them Months Later

Singing to your little one is one of the most meaningful activities you do together! It doesn’t matter if you are tone deaf or an experienced singer, singing to your baby will strengthen your bond.

Infants pay more attention to singing than speech and they have an incredible memory for melodies. So when you sing to them and combine that with your loving interactions, they associate that melody with the feeling of being safe and cared for, and they will remember that months later.

A recent article from The New York Times reported on the work of Dr. Samuel Mehr, principal investigator of the Music Lab at Harvard. His experiments have shown that tiny infants are sensitive to rhythm and pitch and can distinguish familiar melodies. “Their memory for music is shocking,” Dr. Mehr said. Across class and culture, “they’re incredibly perceptive listeners.” Dr. Mehr found that 5-month-old’s whose parents sing them a song for just a week or two remember that melody eight months later. When they meet strangers who sing to them in the lab, they pay more attention to someone singing the familiar melody than a different song, even one with the same words and rhythms. Dr. Mehr’s theory is that singing communicates that a particular grown-up — it could be a grandparent as well as a parent — is paying attention, something enormously important to vulnerable babies. “It’s a signal of who’s a friend, a member of my group,” Dr. Mehr said. Read the full article here: https://nyti.ms/2pYhQqB

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