Individual differences in infants’ early home music environment are associated with later expressive vocabulary development outcomes

Informal music experiences and engagement (e.g., parent-child singing activities) are common in infancy and early childhood. However, the specific role of the early home music environment in fostering infants’ development remains understudied. Recent theories and empirical evidence demonstrate shared biology between music and language processing, as well as overlapping acoustic characteristics of speech and song. Emerging yet limited work has established positive links between infants’ early home music environments and their later receptive vocabulary development. Here, we assessed whether infants’ home music environment is a significant unique predictor of infants’ expressive vocabulary development, an established early marker of children’s language outcomes. In this longitudinal study, 42 parents completed the Music@Home questionnaire to capture their 6-12 month old infants’ home music environments. Parents subsequently completed the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory when their infants were 18- and 24-months of age as a measure of their infants’ expressive vocabulary development. Results demonstrated that the amount parents sing to their infants at 6-12 months significantly predicted their infants’ vocabulary at both 18 months and 24 months, even when accounting for other parental factors (parents’ musicality, education levels, parental verbal responsivity, and parent-child affective attachment). Infants’ general home music environments predicted infants’ vocabulary at 24 months. These findings highlight the importance of rich home musical activities, especially parent singing, as a potential facilitator of early vocabulary development. Findings also motivate further research on how enriched home musical environments may serve as a potential protective factor for children at risk for developmental speech/language disorders.