KID STUFF : Mothers Speak a Universal Tongue

It seems that “The Itsy, Bitsy Spider” and “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep” aren’t the only songs mothers sing to their babies.

Researchers say that parents actually speak musically, allowing infants to get the gist of things long before they understand language. And whether it’s English or Mandarin, Italian or Japanese, it’s the same song.

For 10 years, a team at Stanford University led by psychology professor Anne Fernald has taken video cameras around the world, recording the interaction of mothers and their babies. They found that exaggerated parental speech, or parentese, helps get babies’ attention while communicating and teaching language.

There’s the short, sharp staccato for warning (Nein! Nein!); rising and then falling pitch for praise (BRAvo!); a long smooth, low frequency for comfort (Oooh, pobrecito!) and high, rising melody for calling attention to objects (Where’s the buzz-a-BEE?).

While the melody of mothers’ speech crosses national boundaries, there are unmistakable cultural influences.

In a study of Japanese and American families for example, the American moms labeled objects for infants repeatedly. (“That’s a ball, Timmy. BALL.”) Japanese moms, on the other hand, used the object more to teach social behavior. (“Can you give me the ball? Thank you very much.”)