from Hacker News

Infants understand language via rhythm and tone rather than individual sounds

by im_dario on 12/2/23, 6:50 PM with 87 comments

  • by gnicholas on 12/2/23, 10:10 PM

    I wonder how this squares with the research on cultures where parents scarcely talk to babies, and they turn out fine? [1]

    1: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/parents-in-a-remo...

  • by earlygray on 12/3/23, 2:28 AM

    My parents were deaf, so there wasn't much singing to me when I was a baby. But I managed to pick up spoken language anyhow so I doubt that singing is vital as the headline suggests. Generally as long as babies aren't deprived or abused when they are young, they'll grow up fine.

  • by j45 on 12/2/23, 10:12 PM

    This is 100% my experience.

    The amount of vocabulary that is learned through the experience and play of song is astounding. Similar to a song tied to a memory. Exposure to diverse cuisine and music before birth both seems to be helpful too to the degree possible.

    The number of words I have seen the little ones in my life absorb and use before age 1.5 to 3 leaves you a little speechless.

    So many words, syllables, full sentences, and a way to reduce some of the little frustrations of not being able to express yourself.

    So many words seem to musically originating in a few ways in hind sight:

    First is reading, talking and singing anything you can as much as one can. Learning the sound of the voices around them is super valuable if present from the start.

    Next is ending up being children of the digital co-parent and teacher Miss Rachel. Her content on YouTube was irreplaceable during the pandemic, and the bonus of speaking in song was one of the biggest gifts to learn.

    Last, but not least is a Reggio Emilia child development / care program. If a parent has a chance to check out a Reggio Emilia centric child care program in regards to this topic of learning expression, more than not it’s an invitation to explore and play with lots of music and vocabulary. What’s neat is no place can be Reggio Emilia certified because it’s a town in Italy, so the methods can be freely taught, learned and used at home too.

    What stands out is all of the children in Reggio Emilia programs are not the same, they are very ok with structure but just as adaptable with going with the flow of the fire alarm goes off. The rigour in fuelling music, dance, craft, curiosity, imagination, exploration, interaction and expression.

    There will be some parents who find this approach a fit for them, (it’s a little different than Montessori which can be tough for some children to switch into a regular world program) as it focuses on helping each child bring out their uniqueness at their own pace.

  • by dzolob on 12/2/23, 9:11 PM

    I just sang, sang, sang anything that came to my mind. About mountains, clouds, courage, poo… It was just love pouring out of my heart, and I don’t know if it had something to do with it, but my kid started talking very early on and very well.

    The best thing is was that I got to know him very soon, while my peers and their daughters/sons still were kind of communicating.

  • by tomcam on 12/2/23, 9:35 PM

    Or not. I can sing but all my kids hated it. On the other hand, I always spoke to them using non-baby language, humor, and mannerisms, and they turned out to be incredibly good communicators.

  • by zagrebian on 12/2/23, 11:03 PM

    They should do a study to test if letting babies watch a show like Last Airbender instead of Teletubbies has a positive effect.

  • by player1234 on 12/3/23, 9:18 AM

    What total bs, infants try to guess the next token like all intelligent beings, everyone knows that.

  • by seba_dos1 on 12/3/23, 5:44 PM

    That it's easier to learn via a song is quite obvious to me. I used to compose and record songs for poems I had to memorize in school, and not only those were the only ones I memorized with ease - those are also the ones I still remember today.

  • by markdown on 12/3/23, 7:48 AM

    Reminds me of the chicken boy who spent four years as an infant in a chicken coop.

    > he communicates by making a rapid clicking noise with his tongue

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/jul/11/fiji.jennyfors...

  • by Terr_ on 12/3/23, 4:51 AM

    > Infants understand language via rhythm and tone rather than individual sounds

    I feel this must explain something about the Pingu stop-motion animations, which feature a made-up babble-language that some people think is real-but-foreign.

  • by ceeam on 12/2/23, 9:39 PM

    But try avoiding death metal growl.

  • by ipnon on 12/2/23, 8:47 PM

    This seems to be why people naturally default to sing-song when speaking to babies.

  • by ourmandave on 12/3/23, 2:43 AM

    Does it count if we watch musicals together? Classics, like What's Opera Doc?

    https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1199392770567826

  • by vr46 on 12/2/23, 7:57 PM

    Personal recommendations are:

    * Elmo’s Song

    * Feist’s Sesame Street version of 1-2-3-4

  • by thesausageking on 12/2/23, 8:01 PM

    Abstract:

    "Even prior to producing their first words, infants are developing a sophisticated speech processing system, with robust word recognition present by 4–6 months of age. These emergent linguistic skills, observed with behavioural investigations, are likely to rely on increasingly sophisticated neural underpinnings. The infant brain is known to robustly track the speech envelope, however previous cortical tracking studies were unable to demonstrate the presence of phonetic feature encoding. Here we utilise temporal response functions computed from electrophysiological responses to nursery rhymes to investigate the cortical encoding of phonetic features in a longitudinal cohort of infants when aged 4, 7 and 11 months, as well as adults. The analyses reveal an increasingly detailed and acoustically invariant phonetic encoding emerging over the first year of life, providing neurophysiological evidence that the pre-verbal human cortex learns phonetic categories. By contrast, we found no credible evidence for age-related increases in cortical tracking of the acoustic spectrogram."

    Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-43490-x

  • by jncfhnb on 12/2/23, 10:38 PM

    The actual article simply says babies pick up on phonetic differences featured in rhyme and song. It says nothing about being crucial to learning.

  • by dudul on 12/2/23, 10:26 PM

    "Vital" seems a little strong after reading the article.