When science says singing doesn’t “work” for your child, it’s even worse for science.

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Remember The Mozart Effect? It was this study that brought a thousand Baby Mozart CDs to market: in 1993, the study was published in Nature argued that listening to a Mozart sonata (especially the sonata for two pianos in D major, KV 488) helps people perform better on a test of spatial intelligence.

An inconvenience for Mozart’s Baby salespeople was that there were no babies in the study—all participants were college students. Another reason was that the base effect didn’t even repeat itself: many other researchers tried to find the same thing in their labs, but failed.

However, the notion that music can affect cognition – and especially the cognitive development of children – has not disappeared.

Can your lullabies make your baby smarter?

Starting this month, we have a new randomized controlled trial of a very specific musical intervention that you can do with your child – before he sings. Sure, you may not be Mozart, but can your lullabies make your child smarter?

The study, carried out in both Sweden and Finland, was designed to test the idea that there is a “sensitive” or “critical” period in a child’s development when singing can be a particular impactful contribution (“critical periods”). “It’s an idea that a lot of people believe, but it’s more scientifically controversial than you might think).

To test the idea, the researchers recruited the parents of 135 premature babies (because they were born prematurely, they had a higher risk of underdevelopment). Everyone received support from their new parents, as usual, but some randomly selected families also received special music therapy sessions where they were “supported and inspired” to sing to their children more often.

Then they waited. After an average of two years, today’s toddlers were tested using a standardized measure of childhood development called Bailey III. Specifically, they used parts of the test that test cognitive skills (which test things like a child’s attention and understanding of hidden objects) and expressive and receptive communication (which tests how well a child understands language, gives directions, follows, and recognizes concepts) . . from photographs).

The first problem you might notice when setting it up is a blinding one: unlike medical treatment research, there is no equivalent of a sugar pill or dummy injectable placebo. Thus, those who were in the “singing” group knew full well that they were in the singing group, but this was not a big problem in a study that measured outcomes long after the intervention (it is unlikely that parental processing would have continued). yourself differently). than their children; this does not mean that the children remembered it; and in each case the outcome was an objective measure, not a subjective parental report of how the child was doing).

It is simply unrealistic to be double blind in such a psychological experiment. This is a major problem for randomized trials of all sorts of interventions (like the “close your social media account” studies I wrote about earlier, as well as the studies on the effects of video games on well-being – how do you get their control group really like treatment?). But in this case it is not a deal breaker.

What are the results? The intervention worked on singing: the experimental group sang much more than the control group. But in terms of child development, two years later, nothing was found about Bailey III at all. There were no differences between the singing group and the control group in any developmental measures. As far as they could see in this study—and perhaps even a larger study could reveal a more subtle effect—newborn singing did not affect these important developmental skills by two years of age.

Direct null results

There is a “metascientific” moment here. The fact that a study with absolutely zero results – the intervention had absolutely no effect, and it was accurately reported without hype or exaggeration – was published in a peer-reviewed journal is commendable. Of course, we shouldn’t be celebrating this – posting null results should be perfectly normal. But because scientists (and scientific journals) prefer exciting, clear, positive results, a study that says, “We tried it and it didn’t work” is extremely valuable.

And actually even more interesting. In fact, a previous report from the same study that analyzed younger children found significant differences between singing and control groups on one measure (specifically, infants’ ability to perceive changes in auditory stimuli). But this long-term study found nothing about singing.

It reminded me of a study I wrote last year on the impact of cash incentives given to parents on the development of their children. The first study in very young children found differences in the brain but did not look at cognitive effects; I warned that it would be a good idea to wait and see if measurable cognitive differences appeared later. Judging from this new narrative, the initial benefits of which fade over time, this seems like good advice.

So is this the end of the story? Singing to your child will not improve his brain in the long run, so can we forget about it? After all, we all want to be “factual” in parenting – does that mean we can put singing on the list of “debunked parenting tips”?

Of course not. This study is a good reminder that some things are worth doing, not because their effect can be measured in a controlled scientific study, but because they are great things in their own right. The researcher cannot come and tell us that singing a lullaby to your child is not worth it, because singing lullabies to your child is so much fun, that’s all.

Don’t get me wrong: I think this study was still worth doing, and if it came up with solid positive results, parents could be informed to consider continuing (although, sorry, it was would be bad). muffled sound). Even with a zero result, it is still informative and helps us understand what affects children’s brains or, in this case, may not affect their growth.

This works both ways. Last week we saw the Scottish body drafting new rules for judges sentencing young people. They argued that young people—even convicted rapists—should receive lighter sentences because neuroscience studies show that the brain doesn’t fully develop until their mid-twenties. This was part of what led to a man found guilty of rape escaping prison entirely, sparking outrage and an appeal is now pending.

Rigid commitment to “science”

Such rigid adherence to what “science” says seems completely untrue: every human or societal decision, whether it’s raising your children, punishing criminals, or even cooking dinner, can be part of the equation. but it cannot dictate exactly what you should do. There are a number of other considerations—moral, aesthetic, and so on—that also need to be taken into account (and when you get to the surface, people who say they made a decision based purely on “science” are actually deciding on based on these other factors).

If you sing to your child, who cares that in two years his cognitive abilities have not improved? Maybe the child is really happy about it. Maybe you like it. Or maybe you think that by surrounding your child with music at such a young age, you are helping him have one of the most important and profound human experiences.

Try to measure it in a scientific study.

Other things I’ve written lately

You might think that attacking astrology is like shooting a fish (hunting a fish?) into a barrel. Well, this week I did.

In a completely different light, on Saturday, see my article on the 40th anniversary of the infamous fake “Hitler Diaries” and a brief digression into the science of handwriting analysis.

Science Link of the Week

I couldn’t refer to anything other than this bizarre story about GISAID, a large database website where scientists publish the genetic data of viruses. I don’t want to spoil the completely insane story told by the authors The science Magazine. Read.

This is a science fiction starring Stuart Ritchie, a newsletter for i. If you’d like to receive this straight to your inbox every week, sign up here.