Training babies for “sweet anticipation”: Emphasizing expectation arousal in infant-directed mother singing

Abstract

This study explores how mothers construct, implement, and break musical anticipations while singing to their infants. Five mothers were videotaped multiple times while singing to their infants the songs that they routinely sang in their homes. Analysis of the videotapes focused on the following two aspects of the mothers’ performance of the songs: (1) the vocal aspect of the mother’s performance, which was examined with respect to dynamic changes, accents, and rhythmic variations and (2) the physical aspect, which included moving, touching, and smiling while singing. The results of this study were reached by integrating the above data. We show that mothers do construct, implement, and break musical anticipations in vocal and motional performances of songs they sing to their infants. They construct their infants’ musical anticipations, encouraging them to predict what is about to happen; stimulate arousal and attention of the infants using the tension mechanism of delayed gratification; they emphasize unexpected musical events, creating emotional experiences for the infants. These conclusions provide a new explanation for the great importance of infant-directed mother singing.