The initial response of moms and dads to a cranky baby is to talk to them as they cry or become distressed. A new study, however, shows that singing may be twice as effective as talking in soothing anxious babies.

The study, published in the journal Infancy, probed the impact of music on babies.

Music has been well established as something that influences people emotionally, mentally and physically. When people hear music, some nod, tap their fingers or stomp their feet.

According to the researchers, however, babies "lack the requisite physical or mental ability" to demonstrate behaviors in response to music the way adults do.

The researchers hoped to determine babies' mental ability to process music and exhibit an emotional response.

"Many studies have looked at how singing and speech affect infants' attention, but we wanted to know how they affect a baby's emotional self-control," said study co-author Professor Isabelle Peretz of the Center for Research on Brain, Music and Language at the University of Montreal in Canada.

Two experiments were done on 30 infants who were 6 months to 9 months old.

In the first experiment, the researchers either talked to the babies directly in baby or adult language; played recorded speech of adults or baby talk; or played songs recorded by a Turkish singer in a language unfamiliar to the infant subjects.

According to co-author Mariève Corbeil, also of the University of Montreal, songs that parents sing to their babies have a "specific range of tones and rhythms."

In the second experiment, they repeated the same series of activities with a different set of babies. This time, songs in French, sang by the babies' mothers, were played — sounds that were very much familiar to the babies. The trials were done until the babies grew irritable and started to cry.

The researchers found that the babies remained calm for around nine minutes when they listened to Turkish music. On the other hand, they stayed calm for about four minutes when they listened to someone talking regardless if it was baby talk or not.

The infants also remained calm when they listened to music familiar to them than when they listened to someone talking. Thus, they concluded that even if the room was dull and there were no toys inside, "the sound of a woman singing prolonged infants' positive or neutral states and inhibited distress."

The researchers believe this study is important because most mothers, especially those from Western countries, talk to their babies more often than they sing to them. Singing has emotion-regulating properties and may help in children's mental development.

Photo: Toshimasa Ishibashi | Flickr