new delhi crying baby try singing a song rather than talking a team of scientists confirmed this after a study involving 58 infants age seven to ten months they found that songs even in a language not used by the parents caught the kids attention and delayed a crying outbreak much more than talking to them the researchers coled by sandra trehub professor emeritus at university of toronto mississauga and involving university of montreal scientists found that singing to infants delays the onset of distress by twice as long as talking to them the study was published in the online version of the journal infancy one of the things that probably makes singing so effective in terms of emotion regulation is the fact that its very repetitive and predictable the timing is exact you keep the beat says trehub director of the music development lab at utms infant and child studies centre in the department of psychology i think in doing that you can almost hypnotize infants you capture them or distract them or whatever it is but they become quite captivated by that rhythmic repetitive material coming in the research involved playing three types of sounds to 58 male and female infants age seven to 10 months who were put into two groups one group was exposed to audio recordings of adultdirected speech speech conducted in an adult tone of voice as well as speech and song in an infantdirected style all in french the most familiar language for the infants the other group was exposed to the same three stimuli in turkish to determine whether the simple repetitive rhythms of the music would capture their attention despite their unfamiliarity with the language in both cases the infants were seated in front of their mothers in a dimly lit sound booth that was covered with black cloth and had no toys people or other stimuli the objective was to determine how long the infants would attend to each recording before exhibiting the cry face lowered brows lip corners pulled to the side mouth opening and raised cheeks the babies in the group listening to turkish sounds remained calm for an average duration of nine minutes while listening to the song their attention lasted just over four minutes for the infantdirected turkish talk and just under four minutes for the adultdirected turkish talk the results were similar for the french stimuli group with the infants attending to the song for about six minutes the results trehub says reflect that song regardless of the level of familiarity with the language is much more powerful than words at capturing the attention of infants and helping them to regulate their emotions and avoid distress she says it also shows that infants can be just as engaged by song as adults even though they cannot show it with movements when its singing the words didnt seem to matter because the song was done very rhythmically in this lively positive and pleasant manner so