Name:Angela, Dou

School/Affiliation:University of Toronto Scarborough

Co-Authors:Victoria H. Ivakitch, Laura K. Cirelli

Virtual or In-person:In-person

Short Bio:

Angela is a fourth-year PhD candidate in experimental psychology at the University of Toronto Scarborough. Her research interests focus on caregiver-infant musical engagement and how infant behavioural responsiveness during song interactions with their parents help drive their emerging shared musical relationships.

Abstract:

The present study investigates whether infant behaviour modulates the frequency and quality of musical interactions with their parents. Here, parent-infant dyads (N = 51) participated in the lab. Parents sat facing their 7- to 8-month-old infants (seated in a highchair) and alternated between singing familiar and novel songs (six total trials). Parents were encouraged to sing each song for however long they wished. Song trials were followed by 30 s break periods, during which parents were instructed to engage normally with their child but to avoid using song. Audiovisual recordings of the sessions were annotated by trained research assistants to identify song durations and parent-infant behavioural responsiveness, including rhythmic movements, affect, and attentive listening on each trial. Preliminary analyses show that parents were more likely to continue singing a particular song (i.e., longer song durations) when their infants demonstrated proportionally more positive affect on that trial, even after controlling for song familiarity and individual parent characteristics (their mean song duration across trials, individual persistence, and attachment to infant). Infants’ positive affect across all their song trials was also positively correlated with their parents’ self-reported feelings of positive emotion by the end of the experiment, supporting the efficacy of musical engagement in strengthening parent-infant attachment bonds. First findings already suggest that caregiver-infant musical bids are likely bidirectional and built on socially driven contingencies. Infants’ active engagement cues help shape immediate musical outcomes, which may drive long-term dyadic musical relationships.