Psychology of Music

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`Songese': maternal structuring of musical interaction with infants

Elena Longhi
Psychology of Music 2009; 37; 195 originally published online Mar 10, 2009;
DOI: 10.1177/0305735608097042

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A RT I C L E 195

‘Songese’: maternal structuring of Psychology of Music

Psychology of Music
musical interaction with infants Copyright © 2009
Society for Education, Music,
and Psychology Research
vol 37(2): 195–213 [0305-7356
(200904) 37:2; 195–213]
10.1177/0305735608097042
http://pom.sagepub.com

ELENA LONGHI
R O E H A M P T O N U N I V E R S I T Y, U K

A B S T R A C T The aim of this study was to investigate the temporal structure of

mother–infant interactions with songs, with particular attention to two aspects: 1) the
singing of the mothers to their infants, and 2) the non-verbal behaviours mothers and
infants produce in synchrony with the musical beat. Four mother–infant dyads were
video-recorded when the infants were 3–4 months of age and again when they were
7–8 months old. Mothers were asked to sing songs of their choice while interacting
with their infants. Analyses of the mothers’ singing and synchronous behaviours with
the beat revealed that they emphasized the hierarchical structure of the song and
provided a segmentation of the temporal structure of the interaction. Infants were
shown to be sensitive to their mothers’ emphasis by producing significantly more
synchronous behaviours on some beats than on others. It is suggested that the
multimodal sensory information provided by the mothers ensures the infants’ effective
learning and conveys the characteristics of what could be called ‘songese’ – the
equivalent of ‘motherese’.

KEYWORDS: infant, interaction, mother, music, singing, synchronization, temporal structure

Temporal structure is a phenomenon experienced in several aspects of the human

life, and one of its main characteristics is to help discriminate and order events which
otherwise will be perceived as a chaotic stream of unrelated information. For
instance, in mother–infant speech interactions temporal structure plays a crucial role
in successful communication. In particular, the partners’ ability to respond promptly
to each other and to take turns ensures the fine tuning of early social interactions
(Byers, 1976; Schaffer, 1999; Stern, Beebe, Jaffe, & Bennett, 1977). In this context,
the timings, rhythmical patterns, and repetition of the mothers’ vocal expressions and
behaviours help the infants to create temporal expectancies of when the next event
will be, facilitating coordination with the mother and strengthening the bond
between partners (Brazelton, Kozlowski, & Main, 1974; Bullowa, 1979).
The importance of temporal structure in mother–infant interactions resides not
only in successful communication, but also in its contribution to infants’ cognitive
development and regulation of emotions (Bloom, 1993; Lewkowicz, 1989, 2000). In
fact, the infants’ sensitivity to temporal information and their ability to create antici-
pation supports memory and the representation of events, and also promotes the

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196 Psychology of Music 37(2)

process of information (Dougherty & Haith, 1997). On the other hand, the opportun-
ity to coordinate with the mother upholds the infant’s experience of interpersonal
contingencies, which helps to regulate the level of attention and arousal and serves
to maintain positive affect (Stern, 1974, 1977).
Although several studies have observed the relevance of temporal structure in
mother–infant speech interactions, little is known about its role in mother–infant
singing interactions. This study explores the implications of temporal structure when
mothers sing to their young infants within an interaction.

Temporal structure and its hierarchical organization in language

and music
In order to understand the nature of temporal structure in mother–infant singing
interactions, it is important to explore its components and their relation to rhythm,
music and language. The basic component of the structure of rhythm is the beat, or
pulse, which represents the fundamental unit of duration in music. The beat can be
accented by extending the duration or increasing the volume (Dowling & Harwood,
1986). The function of the accent is to emphasize the beat and make it perceived as
stronger. The cyclical alternation of stronger and weaker beats creates the meter,
which is another component of the temporal structure and is usually represented by
notation and bar lines. The first beat of each bar or measure is often accented so as
to mark the meter. Beat and meter form the basic temporal organization on which
rhythmical patterns are built. Another component of temporal structure is repre-
sented by rhythmical grouping, which is crucial for understanding a piece of music
and defining its hierarchical organization. According to Lerdahl and Jackendoff
(1983), just as speech can be segmented into clauses, phrases, words and syllables, a
continuous musical event can be segmented into units of three to four notes, then
into phrases, and then into larger units. In this way the authors tried to bridge the
structure of music and language, although they did not provide any empirical evi-
dence to support this. Along the same line, Martin (1972), Yeston (1975) and Handel
(1989) argued that these components, in particular the succession of stronger and
weaker beats in the meter, characterize speech and music, so that both are perceived
as layered, i.e., hierarchically organized.

T E M P O R A L S T RU C T U R E I N I N FA N T- D I R E C T E D S P E E C H A N D S I N G I N G
Interestingly, temporal structure, and its hierarchical organization in particular, have been
observed in infant-directed speech. In fact, when speaking to their infants, the mothers’
emphasis of the prosodic contour promotes speech discrimination, drawing the infants’
attention to the relevant speech information (Liu, Kuhl, & Tsao, 2003) and parsing the
flow of speech into units like clauses and phrases (see Hirsh-Pasek, Kemler Nelson,
Jusczyk, Druss, & Kennedy, 1987; Kemler Nelson, Hirsh-Pasek, Jusczyk, & Cassidy, 1989;
Jusczyk, Hirsh-Pasek, Kemler Nelson, Kennedy, Woodward, & Piwoz, 1992). Such audi-
tory perceptual abilities are crucial for infants because they constitute part of the process
of learning language. In fact, a number of studies (see, for example, Benasich & Tallal,
2002; Molfese, 2000) have found that there is a relationship between high degrees of
speech discrimination in early infancy and progress in language abilities afterwards.

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 Longhi: Songese: Maternal structuring of musical interaction with infants 197

Mothers not only facilitate the infants’ parsing of speech into units, they also have
been found to exaggerate cues of the musical structure, emphasizing the phrasing
structure of the songs (Trainor, Clark, Huntley, & Adam, 1997). In fact, when Trainor
and colleagues (1997) examined the clarity of musical structure of infant-directed
versus infant-absent singing of lullabies and playsongs to a group of infants between
4 and 7 months of age, they found that the mothers increased the duration of the
final syllable plus the inter-phrase pause in playsongs. Also, the relative length of
stressed syllables was longer than unstressed syllables but only in playsongs.
Importantly, these findings occur only in the infant-present context, thus supporting
Trainor’s hypothesis (1996) that one of the purposes of infant-directed singing is to
instruct infants about the organization of auditory patterns, such as phrase structure
and grouping. However, it is not known how mothers emphasize the musical struc-
ture of their singing during a playful interaction in a naturalistic setting and whether
this changes in relation to infants’ development.

T E M P O R A L S T RU C T U R E I N S P E E C H I N T E R AC T I O N S
As mentioned earlier, temporal structure is experienced in early mother–infant speech
interaction, where timing plays a crucial role in the flow of communication (Stern
et al., 1977). Already at 3 to 4 months, infants and mothers are extremely sensitive
to each other’s behaviours and ‘respond’ within ‘a split second’ (Beebe and Stern,
1977). Although the mother’s performance is characterized by variation to ensure a
homeostatic state in the infant, Stern and colleagues (1977) suggested that mothers
also establish a ‘beat’ around which the interaction is structured and organized. In
this view, the mother’s rhythmical behaviours play a crucial part. For instance,
Koester, Papousek, & Papousek (1989) observed that during face-to-face interaction
with their 3-month-old infants, mothers produced tactile, kinaesthetic, vestibular and
visual stimuli that are rhythmically organized. In addition, these patterns of moth-
ers’ behaviours are temporally coordinated and synchronized (Sullivan & Horowitz,
1983). Crucially, the redundancy of information and temporal synchrony across
different modalities has been found to be particularly successful with young infants,
capturing their attention and supporting their perceptual learning (Bahrick &
Lickliter, 2000). In this view, the maternal multimodal participation in speech
interactions appears to help infants to process information, regulate their state and
emotions (Papousek & Papousek, 1981), and also assist infants’ learning through
repetition and regularity (Fogel, 1977; Messer, 1980; Turkewitz & McGuire, 1978).
Although the contingent behaviour of the mother is considered crucial in early social
interaction and it has been identified in interaction with speech, it is as yet unknown
whether this occurs in interaction with songs.

I N FA N T S ’ P E RC E P T I O N A N D R E S P O N S E TO T E M P O R A L S T RU C T U R E
According to Fraisse (1982), both infants and adults display a natural tendency to
segment and regroup subsets of sounds. Such auditory perceptual ability is crucial
for infants because it constitutes part of the process of learning language, and they
also experience this when listening to music. Musical variations, like the extension of
tone duration and change in melodic patterns, favour adults’ perceptual discrimin-
ation of music into units (Clarke & Krumhansl, 1990). Interestingly, this is also found

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198 Psychology of Music 37(2)

in young infants. In fact, it has been demonstrated that 4.5- and 6-month-old infants
can discriminate the phrasing structure of music while exposed to Mozart minuets
(Krumhansl & Jusczyk, 1990). Thus, infants and adults use parameters of perceptual
segmentation to identify structure in processing music similar to those they use in
language.
On the other hand, little is known about infants’ response to the temporal structure
of music. Rock, Trainor and Addison (1999) analysed the behaviours of 6-month-old
infants while listening to playsongs and lullabies. They found that infants did not
produce more rhythmic physical activity in the presence of playsongs compared to
lullabies. Another important aspect of infants’ participation and response to music
is their synchronization with the musical beat, as this shows their understanding of
musical patterns. Yet little attention has been paid to this. Only one study (Moog,
1976) claimed that from 4 to 6 months of age infants coordinate their rhythmic
behaviours to music. However, the author did not offer clear evidence in support of
his claim and the methodology is not convincing (see, e.g., Sloboda, 1985).
The aim of the present study was to examine the temporal structure of
mother–infant interaction with songs paying particular attention to two aspects: 1) the
mothers’ singing to their infants, and 2) the non-verbal behaviours mothers and
infants produce in synchrony with the musical beat.
In particular, some hypotheses were made:
a) Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983) proposed the hierarchical organization of speech
and music on the basis that speech can be divided into clauses, phrases, words and syl-
lables, and similarly a continuous musical event can be segmented into units of three
to four notes, then into phrases, and then into larger units. We know that in infant-
directed speech, mothers help infants by parsing speech in smaller units such as
clauses and phrases. And, in infant-directed singing, mothers emphasize the phrasing
structure of the songs (Trainor et al., 1997). Thus, when singing to their infants in
an interaction, mothers were expected not only to stress the phrasing structure of the
song, but also to segment the musical events in smaller units like 3 to 4 notes and
large units. In this way, mothers emphasize the hierarchical organization of the song.
b) In speech interaction mothers have been observed to synchronize their verbal and
non-verbal behaviours – i.e., tactile, kinaesthetic and visual patterns – providing their
infants with multimodal sensory information (Sullivan & Horowitz, 1983). Similarly, in
singing interactions mothers were expected to coordinate their behaviours and synchron-
ize with the beat so as to convey a coherent and temporally organized participation.
c) Finally, on the basis of previous studies (see, for example, Krumhansl & Jusczyk,
1990) it was hypothesized that the infants would show some understanding of the
temporal structure of the songs and that they would do this by synchronizing their
behaviours with the beats emphasized by their mothers. This was expected at 7–8
months of age but not earlier (e.g., 3–4 months of age).

Method
PA RT I C I PA N T S
This exploratory study involved four mother–infant dyads: two English-speaking and
two Gaelic-speaking mothers. The choice of two groups from different linguistic and

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 Longhi: Songese: Maternal structuring of musical interaction with infants 199

cultural backgrounds was made in order to avoid drawing conclusions about temporal
organization of musical interaction that could turn out to be overly culture-specific.
Participant numbers were purposely kept very small (N ⫽ 8: four infants and four
mothers) because of the in-depth, microanalytic method used, which provides a large
amount of very detailed data. Infants were all full-term, did not have any complica-
tions at birth, and were developing normally. In both groups there was one boy and
one girl. The infants were video-recorded at 3–4 months of age (range ⫽ 2.28–4,
mean ⫽ 3.15), and again later, at 7–8 months of age (range ⫽ 7–8.06, mean ⫽ 7.17).

P RO C E D U R E
The sessions were filmed with a Panasonic video camera with concurrent high quality
trace on a Sony digital audio recorder. The dyads were recorded in their homes at the
most convenient time for mother and infant. The mothers were asked to sing songs
while interacting with their infants at the two time points: when the infants were
3–4-month-olds, and later, at the age of 7–8 months.
Because the temporal organization of the interaction with songs were examined
from a musical as well as a behavioural prospective, the data were coded and analysed
in such a way that the two sets of data were compatible. For this reason, the musical
beat tapped by a professional musician was superimposed on the musical interaction
so as to use exactly the same temporal reference. The beat was identified with the
help of an orchestra conductor who, because of his training and profession, was an
expert in identifying the temporal structure of music, and in particular the beat. He
was asked to tap the tempo established by the mothers, marking the beat of the songs
they sung. His tapping finger was video-recorded while he listened to the musical
event. He could only hear the song; he could not see any of the other aspects of the
interaction between the mothers and infants. The conductor was allowed to listen to
the musical event as many times as necessary to ascertain the variations in style and
structure of the mothers’ songs. Once the beat was identified, it was possible to
rebuild the song, analyse its structure and examine the musical participation of the
mothers and infants. A second musician (a drummer) performed the inter-rater reli-
ability of the tapped beat; the Kappa value was .89.
The analysis of mothers’ and infants’ non-verbal behaviours included coding their
physical as well as communicative-affective behaviours which serve to determine their
levels of activity and attempts to communicate, respectively. The partners’ behaviours
were coded by marking their onset and offset times; particular attention was given to
their single gestures and cyclical activity. ‘Cyclical action’ refers to a repeated move-
ment which starts from one point and ends up more or less at the same point. An
example of a cycle is head nodding, which corresponds to down–up–down or up–
down–up movements. By contrast, a single gesture is a unidirectional movement, like
lifting the head up.
The mothers’ physical behaviours included head, body, hand and leg behaviours,
in contact with their infant or with a toy. The infants’ coded behaviours included
head, body, hand and leg behaviours, in contact with their mother or with a toy. The
mother’s communicative-affective behaviours included touching the infant, kissing,
face-to-face contact and smiling. The infant’s communicative-affective behaviours
included touching, active communicative effort (e.g., protruding tongue and mouth

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200 Psychology of Music 37(2)

wide open) and smiling. Inter-rater reliability of the mothers’ and infants’ cyclical
behaviours showed a high level, with Kappa values of .83 for the mothers’ behaviours
and .80 for the infants’ behaviours. Once the behavioural data had been coded, their
onset times were compared with the onset times of the beat to establish the existence
of synchronization. Synchronization was considered to occur when the distance
between the onset time of a behaviour and the beat occurred within 80ms (i.e., 0ms
to 80ms) temporal windows. The relation between the overall mean number of syn-
chronous behaviours and beat position was also examined, as well as that between the
overall mean number of synchronous behaviours and phrases of the song.

Results
M U S I CA L A NA LYS I S : T H E T E M P O R A L S T RU C T U R E O F T H E S O N G S S U N G
BY THE MOTHERS
The mothers sang a total of 27 songs: 13 songs when the infants were 3–4 months
of age and 14 when the infants were 7–8 months of age. The mothers sang between
two and five songs each. The songs chosen by the mothers were playsongs with an
8-beat phrase structure, and the analyses were based on this particular phrasing
structure.
As Table 1 shows, the repertoire of the mothers’ songs was quite small, as they
tend to repeat the same songs over and over again.
In order to understand the temporal structure of singing interactions, the analy-
sis of the mothers’ singing and of theirs and their infants’ synchronous behaviours
with the beat were based on the following temporal organization:

1. Phrase structure, i.e., the segmentation of the song into large units. In the
present study songs are organized in 4-phrases;
2. Pair of beats, i.e., the segmentation of the phrase into middle units. In this
study each phrase is 8-beat structured, thus it presents 4-pairs, i.e., 1st pair ⫽
1st–2nd beats; 2nd pair ⫽ 3rd–4th beats; 3rd pair ⫽ 5th–6th beats; and 4th
pair ⫽ 7th–8th beats;
3. Downbeat/upbeat, i.e., the contrast of strong and weak beats within each pair.

TA B L E 1 Songs sung by the mothers

Song title Type

1. Baa Baa Black Sheep Nursery rhyme
2. Wonderful Baby (by Don McLean). Song from film theme music adapted for the
infant
3. Ally Bally Children’s song
4. Cluasan, suilean, suon is beul Scottish reel tune/dance adapted for infant
5. Cluinn an tainaich, cluinn an tainich (Gaelic version of Frere Jacques). Playgroup song
6. Suas Scottish reel
7. Brochan leam, Tana leam Gaelic song (song about porridge).Work song
8. Calum beag an t-siucar Gaelic song (originally Domhnall Beag). adapted
for the infant

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 Longhi: Songese: Maternal structuring of musical interaction with infants 201

M U S I CA L A NA LYS I S O F T H E S O N G S
One mixed four-way ANOVA was applied to examine the songs’ temporal structure
on the basis of the beat duration in relation to three within-factors: phrase
(⫻4 levels, i.e., the number of phrases in the song); pair of beats (⫻4 levels, i.e.,
number of pairs in each 8-beat phrase); downbeat/upbeat (⫻2 levels, i.e., contrast of
stronger and weaker beat within each pair); and one between-factor, i.e., condition
(⫻2 levels, i.e., 3–4 months and 7–8 months).
Table 2 presents the overall mean beat duration of the songs in relation to the
within-variables (i.e., phrase, pair of beats and downbeat/upbeat) as well as each beat
of the phrase. Analysis of variance was applied to the total dataset of the songs’ per-
formances collapsed across mothers. The analysis was thus not as a function of indi-
vidual mothers, but of song performances. If the assumption of sphericity was not
satisfied, Greenhouse-Geisser p-values were used.

M U S I CA L A NA LYS I S : P H R A S E S T RU C T U R E A N D PA I R O F B E AT S
First of all, there was no significant main effect of phrase nor of condition. There
was, however, a significant effect for the duration of pairs of beats, (F(3, 75) ⫽ 20.28,
p ⬍ .000). Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons was used for post-hoc com-
parison, yielding a new threshold for significance of p ⬍ .01. Pairwise comparisons
with 2-tailed (paired) t-tests revealed that the 2nd pair, i.e., the 3rd–4th beats, was
significantly longer than both the 1st pair, i.e., 1st–2nd beats, (t ⫽ 3.74, df ⫽ 26,
p ⬍ .001), and approached significance with the 3rd pair, i.e., the 5th-6th beats,
(t ⫽ 2.61, df ⫽ 26, p ⬍ .015). Moreover, the 4th pair, i.e., the 7th–8th beats, was
significantly longer than the 1st pair (t ⫽ 5.33, df ⫽ 26, p ⬍ .000), the 2nd pair
(t ⫽ 3.68, df ⫽ 26, p ⬍ .001), and also the 3rd pair (t ⫽ 5.14, df ⫽ 26, p ⬍ .000).
Therefore, when mothers sing to their infants, they mostly extend the duration of the
last pair of beats of the phrase, i.e., the 7th and 8th beats, hence marking the end of
the phrase and the boundary between phrases. They also lengthen the duration of the
3rd and 4th beats, i.e., the pair of beats in the middle of the phrase, emphasizing the
middle of the phrase.

3–4 m 7–8 m
0.9
Mean beat duration in seconds

0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
4th
5th
6th
7th
8th

4th
5th
6th
7th
8th

4th
5th
6th
7th
8th

4th
5th
6th
7th
8th
3rd

3rd

3rd

3rd
2nd

2nd

2nd

2nd
1st

1st

1st

1st

1st phrase 2nd phrase 3rd phrase 4th phrase

FIGURE 1 Mean duration of beat by position in phrase, when mothers sing to their infants at 3–4
months and at 7–8 months of age, collapsed across mothers.

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 202
Psychology of Music 37(2)

TA B L E 2 Mean beat duration, expressed in seconds, for each beat, type of beat, pair of beats and phrase of the song

Beat Mean duration Type of beat Mean duration Pair of beats Mean duration Phrase Mean duration
1st 0.44s Downbeat 0.45s 1st (1st and 2nd beats) 0.44s 1st 0.46s
2nd 0.44s Upbeat 0.49s 2nd (3rd and 4th beats) 0.47s 2nd 0.47s
3rd 0.46s 3rd (5th and 6th beats) 0.45s 3rd 0.46s
4th 0.48s 4th (7th and 8th beats) 0.54s 4th 0.49s
5th 0.44s
6th 0.45s
7th 0.47s
8th 0.60s

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 Longhi: Songese: Maternal structuring of musical interaction with infants 203

M U S I CA L A NA LYS I S : D OW N B E AT / U P B E AT
There was a significant effect with respect to the difference between the duration of
downbeats (stronger beat), i.e., 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th beats, and the upbeats (weaker
beat), i.e., 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 8th beats (F(1, 25) ⫽ 14.39, p ⬍ .001). In fact, when
mothers sing to their infants they extend the duration of the upbeats significantly
longer than the downbeats. In this way mothers may be preparing their infants for
the subsequent stronger beat, similar to what a conductor of an orchestra does to sig-
nal that the main beat is to follow.
A number of significant interactions were also found. First of all, a significant
interaction between pair of beats and downbeat/upbeat (F (3, 75) ⫽ 10.05, p ⬍ .002)
suggests that the extended duration of the pair of beats is related to the upbeats. In
particular, the 4th and 8th beats promote the extension of the 2nd and 4th pair of
beats. Second, a significant interaction between phrase and pair (F(9, 225) ⫽ 4.93,
p ⬍ .010), one between phrase and downbeat/upbeat (F(3, 75) ⫽ 3.88, p ⬍ .030)
and one between phrase, pair and downbeat/upbeat (F(9, 225) ⫽ 4.83, p ⬍ .012)
suggest that the duration of the phrases is affected by the length of the pair of beats,
and the upbeats in particular, i.e., some phrases are longer than others. In fact, pair-
wise comparison with 2-tailed (paired) t-tests showed that the duration of the 8th
beat in the 2nd and 4th phrases is significantly longer than the duration of the 8th
beat in the 1st and 3rd phrases of the song (t ⫽ 3.12, df ⫽ 53, p ⬍ .003). The moth-
ers emphasize the middle as well as the end of the song, lengthening the duration of
the last beat in the 2nd and 4th phrases, producing yet another level of segmenta-
tion. Overall there was no effect of condition, i.e., the infants’ age. In sum, these
results suggest that when singing to their infants the mothers accent the upbeats,
lengthening their duration. In this way, they stress the middle and the end of the
phrases, as well as the middle and the end of song. Emphasizing the hierarchical
structure of the song, the mothers segment the musical event into smaller units, help-
ing the infants to process the musical event with regularity and predictability.

B E H AV I O U R A L A NA LYS I S A N D T H E T E M P O R A L S T RU C T U R E O F T H E S O N G
Analysis of the mothers’ synchronous non-verbal behaviours with the beat in relation
to the temporal structure of the song
Similar to the musical analysis, when examining the behaviours of the partners, the
temporal structure of the song was considered on the basis of the same organization:
1) phrase structure, i.e., segmentation of the song into four phrases; 2) pairs of beats,
i.e., segmentation of the phrases into four pairs of beats, 3) downbeat/upbeat, i.e.,
segmentation of the pair of beats into stronger and weaker beats. The analysis was
carried out on the number of synchronous behaviours the mothers produce when
they synchronize with the beat. Table 3 presents the overall mean number of behav-
iours mothers and infants produce in synchrony with the beat in relation to the
within-variables as well as each beat of the phrase.
One mixed four-way ANOVA was employed to investigate the effect of the temporal
structure of the song on the number of behaviours that the mothers produced in syn-
chrony with the beat. The analysis of variance included three within-factors, i.e.,
phrase (⫻4 levels, i.e., the number of phrases in the song), pair of beats (⫻4 levels,
i.e., number of pairs in each 8-beat phrase), downbeat/upbeat (⫻2 levels, i.e., contrast

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 204
Psychology of Music 37(2)

TA B L E 3 Mothers’ and infants’ mean number of synchronous behaviours with the beat, as a function of position, type, pair and phrase

Mean number Type of Mean number Mean number Mean number

synchronous beat synchronous synchronous synchronous
behaviours behaviours behaviours behaviours
Beat
position Mother Infant Mother Infant Pair of beats Mother Infant Phrase Mother Infant
1st 0.55 0.71 Downbeat 0.43 0.57 1st (1st and 2nd beats) 0.53 0.59 1st 0.47 0.59
2nd 0.52 0.48 Upbeat 0.57 0.54 2nd (3rd and 4th beats) 0.51 0.61 2nd 0.58 0.53
3rd 0.41 0.59 3rd (5th and 6th beats) 0.48 0.56 3rd 0.52 0.59
4th 0.62 0.62 4th (7th and 8th beats) 0.52 0.47 4th 0.48 0.52
5th 0.50 0.62
6th 0.45 0.51
7th 0.35 0.38

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8th 0.68 0.59
 Longhi: Songese: Maternal structuring of musical interaction with infants 205

of stronger and weaker beats within each pair), and one between-factor, i.e., condition
(⫻2 levels, i.e., 3–4 months and 7–8 months). The analysis of variance was again
measured with respect to the mothers’ behaviours produced in synchrony with the
beat in all song performances for each condition. If the assumption of sphericity was
not satisfied, Greenhouse-Geisser p-values were used.

Analysis of the mothers’ synchronous behaviours with beat: phrase and pair of beats
There was no significant main effect of phrase nor of condition. However, there was
a highly significant interaction between pair of beats and downbeat/upbeat (F(3, 75) ⫽
5.82, p ⬍ .001). Pairwise comparison was used to explore whether the behaviours in
synchrony with the upbeats are the same as those the mothers extended while
singing, i.e., 4th and 8th beats. Bonferroni correction for multiple comparisons set
the new threshold for significance at p ⬍ .025. Pairwise comparison showed that the
mothers synchronized significantly more often on the 4th and 8th beats compared to
the other beats (t-test 2-tailed (paired) 4th and 8th beats combined vs rest of the beats
(t ⫽ 2.68, df ⫽ 26, p ⬍ .012)). Therefore, through their synchronous behaviours with
the beat, the mothers mark the end and the middle parts of the phrase, i.e., similar
to what they did when singing to their infants.
A number of interactions also emerged. A significant interaction between phrase
and condition was shown (F(3, 75) ⫽ 3.32, p ⬍ .024), and two interactions
approached significance: one between pair of beats and condition (F(3, 75) ⫽ 2.67,
p ⬍ .053) and the other between phrase, pair of beats and condition (F(9, 225) ⫽
1.88, p ⬍ .055). These interactions suggest that the mothers’ synchronous behav-
iours with the beats in the phrases of the song and in the pairs of beats vary as a
function of the infants’ age. For instance, when the infants are 3–4 months of age
the mothers appear to cluster their synchronous behaviours with the beat in the first
half of the song, especially beginning and end of the phrases. By contrast, when their
infants are 7–8 months, mothers appear to distribute their behaviours in synchrony
with the beats across the whole song (see Figure 2). In sum, the mothers seem to syn-
chronize more often with the beats they extended while singing, in particular those
at the end and in the middle of the phrase compared to the others. However, differ-
ently from their singing, their synchronous behaviours change as a function of the
age of the infants.

3–4 m 7–8 m
Mean number synchronous behaviours

1.4
1.2
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
4th
5th
6th
7th
8th

4th
5th
6th
7th
8th

4th
5th
6th
7th
8th

4th
5th
6th
7th
8th
2nd

2nd

2nd

2nd
3rd

3rd

3rd

3rd
1st

1st

1st

1st

1st phrase 2nd phrase 3rd phrase 4th phrase

FIGURE 2 Overall mean number of mothers’ synchronous behaviours with the musical beat when
singing to infants at 3–4 months and 7–8 months of age, as a function of beat position.

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206 Psychology of Music 37(2)

Mothers’ types of synchronous behaviours with the beat

Although mothers use single, cyclical and communicative-affective behaviours in syn-
chrony with the beat, 60 percent of their synchronous behaviours are in cycles (see
Figure 3). In particular, at 3–4 months mothers produce head nodding and body
bouncing, and numerous cycles in contact with the infants’ limbs, i.e., bouncing and
waving. Later, when infants are 7–8 months of age, mothers mostly produce cycles
in contact with the infants’ bodies as well as toy cycles. Thus it appears that mothers
convey the temporal structure of the song according to the terms of the interaction
which change with infants’ development.

Analysis of the infants’ synchronous non-verbal behaviours with the beat in relation
to the temporal structure of the song
Similar to the analyses of the mothers’ verbal and non-verbal behaviours, the infants’
behaviours in synchrony with the beat were also considered in relation to the tem-
poral structure of the song.
One mixed four-way ANOVA examined the effect of the infants’ behaviours that
were synchronous with the beat. There were three within-factors, i.e., phrase (⫻4
levels, i.e., the number of the phrases in the song), pair of beats (⫻4 levels, i.e., num-
ber of pairs in each 8-beat phrase), downbeat/upbeat (⫻2 levels, i.e., contrast of
stronger and weaker beat within each pair), and one between-factor, i.e., condition
(⫻2 levels, i.e., 3–4 months and 7–8 months). The analysis of variance was carried
out on the number of synchronous behaviours with the beat that infants performed
across the phrases of all song performances in each condition. Again, if the assump-
tion of sphericity was not satisfied, Greenhouse-Geisser values were used.

Analysis of the infants’ synchronous behaviours with beat: phrase and pair of beats
Although there was no significant main effect of phrase nor of condition, a few
significant interactions were found. For instance, a significant interaction between
phrase, pair of beats and condition (F(9, 225) ⫽ 3.42, p ⬍ .001) emerged. This
suggests that infants produce more synchronous behaviours with certain beats
rather than others, according to their position in the phrases and in the song, and
as function of age. There was also a significant interaction between pair of beats

3–4 m 7–8 m
Percentage synchronous cycles

40
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
nodding

shaking

bouncing

swaying

rocking

pattting

caressing

tickling

bouncing

bouncing

waving

Waving
Limb
Finger
Body

Hand

Bouncing
Head

Body
Head

Limb
Body
Body

Hand

Mother Baby Toy

FIGURE 3 Percentage of mothers’ cyclical patterns in synchrony with the beat, as function of age.

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 Longhi: Songese: Maternal structuring of musical interaction with infants 207

Mean number synchronous behaviour 3–4 m 7–8 m

1.4
1.2
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
4th
5th
6th
7th
8th

4th
5th
6th
7th
8th

4th
5th
6th
7th
8th

4th
5th
6th
7th
8th
2nd
3rd

2nd
3rd

2nd
3rd

2nd
3rd
1st

1st

1st

1st
1st phrase 2nd phrase 3rd phrase 4th phrase

FIGURE 4 Overall mean number of infants’ synchronous behaviours with the musical beat at 3–4
and 7–8 months of age, as a function of beat position.

and downbeat/upbeat (F(3, 75) ⫽ 3.02, p ⬍ .035). Pairwise comparison showed a

significant effect on the infants’ amount of synchronous behaviours on the 1st, 4th,
5th and 8th beats (t-tests 2-tailed [paired] 1st, 4th, 5th and 8th beats combined vs
2nd, 3rd, 6th and 7th beats combined; t ⫽ 2.80, df ⫽ 26, p ⬍ .010). Also, a trend
towards a significant interaction between pair, downbeat/upbeat and condition
(F(3, 75) ⫽ 2.47, p ⬍ .068) was found, suggesting that they also synchronize more
often with some beats rather than others in relation to age.
In sum, infants not only synchronize significantly more often with the upbeats
stressed by their mothers, but they also synchronize with the main downbeats next
to them. In so doing, the infants seem to have some understanding of the temporal
structure of the song, especially those parts emphasized by the mothers through their
singing and synchronous behaviours with the beat, synchronizing more often with
those beats in the middle and end of the phrase. The synchronization varies accord-
ing to their age.

Discussion
This study investigated the temporal structure of mother–infant interactions with
songs with particular attention to: 1) the singing of the mothers to their infants, and
2) the non-verbal behaviours synchronous with the beat that mothers and infants
produce during the singing interactions.
First, mothers have been found to emphasize the hierarchical structure of the
songs, irrespective of the infants’ age. A thorough analysis of the temporal structure
of the songs showed that mothers stress the metrical as well as the phrasing struc-
ture of the songs, both acoustically through their singing and behaviourally by syn-
chronizing with the beats crucial to the temporal organization of the songs. Thus, as
speculated by Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983), the grouping structure appears to allow
the continuous metrical event to be divided into units of 3 to 4 notes, then into
phrases, and then into larger units. In doing so, mothers establish regularities that
might provide infants with a means of segmenting the flow of the song, much as they
do with respect to the segmentation of speech.
Interestingly, the mothers convey the hierarchical structure to their infants like an
orchestra conductor. In fact, the mothers emphasize the upbeats, i.e., the ones usually

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208 Psychology of Music 37(2)

regarded as weaker (Radocy & Boyle, 1997). Thus, accenting the upbeats is likely to
be the mothers’ way of signalling (gap effect or syncopation) to their infants that the
downbeat is about to follow, and also a strategy likely to enable the infants to antici-
pate and time their participation to match the relevant beats of the song.
On the other hand, the mothers might emphasize the upbeats because of their lin-
guistic background. In fact, when Patel and Daniele (2003) and Patel (2003) com-
pared the rhythm of language and music in English and French speech and
instrumental music, they found that English speech has larger variability in vowel
length compared to French, and similarly French and English musical themes differ
in rhythmical structure. So, they proposed that the rhythm of language affects the
musical rhythms of its culture. In the present study, English-speaking and Gaelic-
speaking mothers sung according to their own linguistic background, yet the tem-
poral structures of their singing were similar. If we consider the rhythm of these
languages it emerges that English is a stress-timed language, often anacrusic; i.e.,
upbeat–downbeat, whereas in Gaelic the stress is mostly on the first syllable and it is
characterized by unaspirated or aspirated stops. Although there are differences
between these two languages, in recent years many features of Gaelic have disap-
peared. In fact, English seems to have deeply influenced Gaelic, especially through the
media, causing a loss of idioms and higher registers (see Ladefoged, Ladefoged, Turk,
Hind, & Skilton, 1998; Lamb, 1999; MacAulay, 1982, 1986). This might explain why
the mothers of this study, although singing either in English or Gaelic, share similar-
ities in the temporal structure of their songs.
Another aspect of the hierarchical organization of the songs is that the mothers
emphasize the end of the phrase, the 8th beat, and the middle of the phrase, the
4th beat. Thus similar to the findings or Trainor and colleagues (1997), we see that
the mothers also emphasize the end of the phrase when singing in interactions to
their infants. In addition, this study has shown that the mothers stress other levels of
the song, marking the middle of the phrase as well as the middle and end of the song.
Thus through their singing the mothers segment the song into smaller units and dif-
ferent levels, and they do so irrespective of the infant’s age, suggesting that it is a
robust trend in the mothers’ singing to their infants. Also, Bergeson and Trehub
(1999), when they examined the tempo, phrase duration, pause duration, and vowel
elongation of the songs mothers sung to their infants and preschool children, found
that the temporal components of the songs did not change across different contexts.
Second, on the basis of speech interactions, it was anticipated that the mothers
would coordinate their verbal and non-verbal behaviours during interactions with
songs. In fact, the integration of the mothers’ multimodal sensory information
ensures a temporally coherent segmentation of the musical event while singing and
moving their own as well as the infants’ bodies (as the detailed analysis of the mothers’
behaviours has shown). As the infants are sensitive to repetition, this might be more
effective for conveying the segmentation of the musical event and ultimately its hier-
archical organization. Interestingly, the mothers’ multimodal sensory information
seems to evolve with the infants’ development, and their participation shares similar-
ities with speech interactions (see Stern, 1974; Sullivan & Horowitz, 1983; Gogate,
Bahrich, & Watson, 2000).

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 Longhi: Songese: Maternal structuring of musical interaction with infants 209

In fact, at 3–4 months, speech interaction is based on face-to-face communication

and eye contact; the focus of the interaction is on each other (e.g., Beebe & Stern,
1977; Stern, 1977). In the same way, singing interactions appear to attract and
maintain the infants’ attention, and their temporal organization supports turn-taking
and the interlocking of the partners in a contingent interaction. On the other hand,
at 7–8 months, speech interaction shifts from being dyadic to triadic; the attention
shifts from the partners to the object, i.e., joint attention. Similarly, in singing inter-
actions the focus of attention changes from the partners to the object, and the inter-
action is characterized by toy activity. In this way, the constant cyclical and periodical
repetition of the units within and between phrases is performed according to the
infants’ abilities, so as they can create expectations of what will happen next. This
facilitates the identification of boundaries for turn-taking, which is crucial for the
partners’ harmonious participation and smooth communication (Jaffe, Beebe,
Feldstein, Crown, & Jasnow, 2001).
Third, when we consider the infants’ participation in singing interactions, they
were shown to have some understanding of the hierarchical structure of the songs,
as was expected. In particular, when they synchronized with the musical beat, they
produced significantly more behaviours in synchrony with the beats at the begin-
ning/end of the phrase as well as in the middle of the phrase. In this way, the infants
were shown to perceive the segmentation of the musical event not only through the
auditory channel, as demonstrated by Krumhansl and Jusczyk (1990) and Jusczyk
and Krumhansl (1993), but also through the mothers’ multimodal style of singing
and synchronous behaviours with the beat coordinated together. Moreover, the
infants were found to have some understanding of the segmentation of the song, syn-
chronizing their behaviours with the beat already at 3–4 months of age. In this view,
the mothers’ verbal and non-verbal participation is crucial in helping the infants to
parse and process the sensory information, and in facilitating their participation in
the musical interaction. Infants’ sensitivity to temporal coherence suggests that tem-
poral synchrony, as it is provided by the songs, might be particularly important for
their learning in the first months of life (e.g., Bahrick, 1987; Lewkowicz, 1986;
Spelke, 1987). Therefore, the mothers’ intuitive multimodal sensory information
of temporally organized singing and non-verbal behaviours might serve to fulfil
the infants’ early sensitivity and response to redundant information and ability
to integrate patterns of events from different modalities, as suggested by Spelke
(1979).
In general, in speech interactions mothers modify their speech, adopting infant-
directed speech or ‘motherese’ with which they exaggerate prosodic contours, facili-
tating the infants’ parsing of the speech in important syntactic units like phrases and
clauses (Hirsh-Pasek et al., 1987; Kemler Nelson et al., 1989), as well as their activ-
ity and physical participation, i.e., ‘motionese’ (see Brand, Baldwin, & Ashburn,
2002). Similarly, in infant-directed singing mothers adopt a broader style: they mod-
ify their singing – i.e., infant-directed singing, which involves lengthening the dur-
ation of the upbeats – and also their behaviours. In fact, through their multimodal
sensory information, the mothers emphasize the hierarchical structure of the song,
helping the infants to process and segment the musical event into smaller units and

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210 Psychology of Music 37(2)

at different levels. In this view, maternal speaking and, I would add, singing to the
young infants are crucial in the process of learning language as well as in supporting
social interaction (Papousek, 1996; Papousek & Papousek, 1981). It is thus likely that
we are witnessing the characteristics of what one might call ‘songese’, highly com-
parable to many factors of motherese.
Although further investigation is needed to fully understand the implication of tem-
poral structure and its hierarchical organization in mother–infant singing interactions,
the results reported are very promising and they open a window on potentially excit-
ing phenomena within mother–infant interaction. In fact, this has been the first study
to explore in such detail the developmental component of singing interactions.
However, because of the infants’ sensitivity and response to the features of mater-
nal singing, and the fact that the hierarchical organization of the songs might pro-
vide a framework for the interaction, it could be suggested that singing interactions
might be more effective than speech interactions in communication with young
prelinguistic infants, at least in the first months of life. In particular, singing inter-
action supports turn-taking and the contingency of interaction, and also it helps to
promote attunement and bonding between partners.
Moreover, when there are difficulties with the linguistic medium and the partners
are attracted to music, singing interactions might be more appropriate in promoting
communication. For instance, there are a number of developmental disorders where
researchers have reported a special interest in music by children with learning diffi-
culties. Down’s syndrome is a case in point, where older children have been shown to
respond well to music (Cicchetti & Beeghly, 1990), thus it might be that an interaction
with music will attract them and help them to communicate with their partners.
Therefore, it could be that such well-structured musical interaction might be used to
form the crucial foundations for these children’s future linguistic interactions. In this
view, music – and singing in particular – is not just for entertainment and fun between
partners; it is a device for learning to structure the complexities of human interaction.

AC K N OW L E D G E M E N T S

This forms part of the author’s PhD thesis at The University of Edinburgh. The author is very
grateful to the families who took part in the study for their precious contribution. Special thanks
go to a number of colleagues for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript.

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is a Senior Research Officer at the School of Human and Life Sciences at

E L E NA L O N G H I
Roehampton University, London. She obtained her PhD, thesis title ‘The Temporal Structure of
Mother–infant Interactions in Musical Contexts’, in July 2003, from The University of Edinburgh.
She is interested in developmental psychology of music.
Address: School of Human and Life Sciences, Roehampton University, Whitelands College,
Holybourne Avenue, London SW15 4JD, UK.
[email: E.Longhi@roehampton.ac.uk]

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