Using music to facilitate infant word learning

Previous studies on infant word-object learning suggest that infants as young as 6-months of age are capable of learning word-object relationships when labeled by their mother (Matayaho & Gogate, 2008). Yet, the unexplored topic that music could influence infants' learning led to the conduction of this present study. Sixteen 6-8 month old infants heard two novel word-object pairs being labeled. Eight of the infants heard the word-object pair being labeled through speech, while the other 8 heard the pair being labeled through song. Results indicated that infants within the song condition performed better than the infants in the speech condition for identifying the correct word-object pair. Un-hypothesized results also indicated that girls performed better than boys. These findings are discussed and if replicated imply that singing, as opposed to speaking words, may facilitate young infants word-object learning. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries