Virtala Paula, Partanen Eino
Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Department of Psychology and Logopedics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland.
Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience (CFIN), Department of Clinical Medicine, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark.
Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2018 Apr 30. doi: 10.1111/nyas.13646.
Music and musical activities are often a natural part of parenting. As accumulating evidence shows, music can promote auditory and language development in infancy and early childhood. It may even help to support auditory and language skills in infants whose development is compromised by heritable conditions, like the reading deficit dyslexia, or by environmental factors, such as premature birth. For example, infants born to dyslexic parents can have atypical brain responses to speech sounds and subsequent challenges in language development. Children born very preterm, in turn, have an increased likelihood of sensory, cognitive, and motor deficits. To ameliorate these deficits, we have developed early interventions focusing on music. Preliminary results of our ongoing longitudinal studies suggest that music making and parental singing promote infants' early language development and auditory neural processing. Together with previous findings in the field, the present studies highlight the role of active, social music making in supporting auditory and language development in at-risk children and infants. Once completed, the studies will illuminate both risk and protective factors in development and offer a comprehensive model of understanding the promises of music activities in promoting positive developmental outcomes during the first years of life.
音乐和音乐活动常常是育儿过程中自然而然的一部分。正如越来越多的证据所显示的，音乐能够促进婴幼儿时期的听觉和语言发展。它甚至可能有助于支持那些因遗传疾病（如阅读障碍诵读困难）或环境因素（如早产）而发育受损的婴儿的听觉和语言技能。例如，患有诵读困难症的父母所生的婴儿，可能对语音有非典型的大脑反应，并在语言发展方面面临后续挑战。而极早产的儿童出现感觉、认知和运动缺陷的可能性则会增加。为了改善这些缺陷，我们开发了以音乐为重点的早期干预措施。我们正在进行的纵向研究的初步结果表明，音乐创作和父母唱歌能促进婴儿早期语言发展和听觉神经处理。与该领域之前的研究结果一起，目前的这些研究突出了积极的、社会性的音乐创作在支持高危儿童和婴儿的听觉和语言发展方面的作用。这些研究一旦完成，将阐明发育过程中的风险因素和保护因素，并提供一个全面的模型，以理解音乐活动在促进生命最初几年积极发育成果方面的前景。
