Effects of Contingent Lullaby Music on Parent-Infant Interaction and Amount of Infant Crying in the First Six Weeks of Life

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a contingent live music intervention on full term infants’ amount of crying and parent-infant interaction in the first six weeks of life. Subjects (N = 65) were parent-infant dyads who were randomly assigned to either a no-contact control or experimental treatment group. The researcher wrote an original lullaby with each mother in the experimental group and gave instructions as to how to use the lullaby as reinforcement for infant quiet, non-crying behavior. All subjects participated in an assessment for infant crying behaviors once a week for six weeks as well as a six-week follow up video of parent-infant interaction. Infant crying behavior was measured by recording the total number of minutes each infant cried one day a week for six weeks. Parent-infant interaction was measured by observation using the LoTTS Parent-Infant Interaction Coding Scale (Beatty, Stacks, Partridge, Tzilos, Loree, & Ondersma, 2011). All participants were asked to complete a Value of Music survey, and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (Cox, Holden, & Sagovsky, 1987). All subjects in the experimental group were assessed once a week for six weeks for total number of times the contingent music was used. Results indicated that training in the contingent music intervention significantly reduced infant crying duration while increasing mother-infant interaction behaviors for mothers in the experimental group. Analysis by demographic variables such as mother parity, socioeconomic status, and marital status showed no significant group differences on infant crying or interaction scores despite the body of research showing these variables usually affect the quality of caregiver/infant involvement and attachment. Mothers that used the contingent music intervention were more motivated to sing and valued the use of music with their infants more than did mothers in the control group. The outcomes of this study warrant the need for further research on additional benefits of decreased crying time on the infant/caregiver relationship including infant sleep time and caregiver stress.