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This study investigates longitudinal relations for home music environment, as well as parent musicality and rhythm skills, with infant vocabulary development. We measured home music environment (Music@Home), parent musicality (Goldsmiths Musical Sophistication Index), and parent rhythm discrimination (brief version of the Beat-Based Advantage test) when infants were 6-12 months and measured infant vocabulary (MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories) when infants were 12, 18 and 24 months (n=45). Preliminary results show that infant vocabulary at 24 months (n=21) is predicted by home music environment (r=.45) and parent musicality (r=.47), while 18-month vocabulary (n=39) is predicted only by home music environment (r=.38). Exploratory analysis of questionnaire subscales shows that parents who sing more to their infant tend to have infants with larger vocabularies, with the magnitude of this relation increasing with age (12mo: r=.32, 18mo: r=.47, 24mo: r=.56). Findings highlight the importance of music experience, especially parent singing, in early vocabulary development and motivate further research on enriched musical environment as a potential protective factor in developmental speech/language disorders. Our research is funded by NIH (1DP2HD098859) and NSF (1926794). |
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