The impact of mother's mental health, infant characteristics and war trauma on the acoustic features of infant-directed singing
Reference: Raija-Leena Punamäki, Safwat Y. Diab, Konstantinos Drosos, and Samir R. Qouta, “The impact of mother’s mental health, infant characteristics and war trauma on the acoustic features of infant‐directed singing,” Infant Mental Health Journal, 2025
Abstract: Infant-directed singing (IDSi) is a natural means of dyadic communication that contributes to children's mental health by enhancing emotion expression, close relationships, exploration and learning. Therefore, it is important to learn about factors that impact the IDSi. This study modeled the mother- (mental health), infant- (emotional responses and health status) and environment (war trauma)-related factors influencing acoustic IDSi features, such as pitch (F0) variability, amplitude and vibration and the F0 contour of shapes and movements. The participants were 236 mothers and infants from Gaza, the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The mothers reported their mental health problems, infants’ emotionality and regulation skills, and, along with pediatric checkups, illnesses and disorders, as well as traumatic war events that were also photo documented. The results showed that the mothers’ mental health problems and infants’ poor health status were associated with IDSi, characterized by narrow and lifeless amplitude and vibration, and poor health was also associated with the limited and rigid shapes and movements of F0 contours. Traumatic war events were associated with flat and narrow F0 variability and the monotonous and invariable resonance and rhythm of IDSi formants. The infants’ emotional responses did not impact IDSi. The potential of protomusical singing to help war-affected dyads is discussed.
AI-Generated Summary: This paper investigates how a mother’s mental health, an infant’s characteristics, and exposure to war trauma are reflected in the way mothers sing to their infants. Infant-directed singing is an important form of early communication that can support emotional regulation, bonding, and development, but relatively little is known about what shapes its acoustic qualities. The study examined recordings of mothers in Gaza singing to their six-month-old infants and automatically extracted a broad range of characteristics related to pitch variation, loudness and vocal vibration, resonance, rhythm, and melodic contours. These acoustic measurements were then analyzed together with information about maternal depression, PTSD, dissociation and somatic symptoms, infant health and emotional responses, and the mothers’ exposure to traumatic war events. The results show that poorer maternal mental health and infant health problems were associated with flatter, less vivid patterns of vocal amplitude and vibration, while infant health problems were also linked to more limited melodic shapes and movements. Greater exposure to traumatic war events was associated with reduced pitch variability and more monotonous vocal resonance and rhythm. In contrast, infants’ emotionality and regulation skills were not significantly related to the acoustic characteristics of the singing. The findings suggest that difficult psychological, health, and environmental circumstances can be reflected in subtle measurable properties of mother–infant vocal interaction.
