Why Does This Baby Cry When Her Mother Sings? (Viral Video)

This mesmerizing video has received over 21 million views [Update - by December 2014, over 35 million], and is still spreading rapidly through social media. (If video does not play, click here.)

The baby is 10 month-old Mary Lynne Leroux, who weeps as her mother Amanda sings 'My Heart Can't Tell You No', a song most recently popularized by Sara Evans.

Is this baby moved to tears by her mother’s soulful singing?

As a professor who has taught child psychology for 15 years and co-authored two books on the psychology of music, I have some hunches about this viral video—though nothing that will diminish the marvel of this scene. In the end, we may conclude that the video is even more magical than it first appears…

Emotional contagion and synchrony

What we may be witnessing is a remarkable demonstration of emotional contagion, the tendency for humans to absorb and reflect the intense emotions of those around them. Emotional contagion is the foundation of human responses that are essential to social functioning.

It is shown in young infants’ tendency to cry when in the vicinity of another crying baby (known as contagious crying), and to just as easily mimic the joy or glee expressed by another person. Emotional contagion may also be seen in the blank stares of infants of depressed mothers or fathers, reflecting their caregivers’ flat affect (emotionally unexpressive faces).

Parents also imitate their infants’ expressions. Infants begin to show a ‘social smile’ by one to two months of age, and this in turn also triggers more smiling in parents. This mimicry and matching of emotional expressions in time is emotional synchrony—like 'getting in step' with each other, to dance together in a smooth interaction.

So what does this have to do with the video?

At the beginning of the video, the mother begins with three sentences: “Mummy’s going to sing you a song…? You want mummy to sing a song, honey? Let me know how you feel about this song, okay?” Notice the music of her speech: Each sentence ends with the melody going sharply upward.

Although the infant is not yet verbal, her mother pauses after each question as she would with a speech partner. The mother is essentially inviting the infant into a performance, and the infant responds with smiles and rapt attention.

This orientation to each other is important in establishing the optimal conditions for emotional contagion and synchrony.

The singing begins. We cannot see the mother in the video. But when she’s singing, I imagine the emotional expression on her face to be intense as she sings soulfully about loss and longing. The infant immediately mimics this concentrated facial expression (emotional contagion).

The infant shows a yearning and pain in her face way beyond her years, because for the moment she is 'borrowing' her mother's emotion from the song.

At the end of each phrase, the mother's facial muscles probably relax as she takes a new breath. In tandem, we see that the infant also smiles and relaxes at the end of every phrase—in time with her mother (emotional synchrony).

In this case, the infant is picking up emotions not from her mother's internal feelings, but from gestures in a performance. The depth of this infant’s responses is quite extraordinary. Infants differ from each other as much as adults do, and not every infant shows emotional responses to the same degree.

So does the song itself have no effect?

On the contrary, I believe the singing plays a very important role in this scenario. In daily interactions, emotional expressions are fleeting. Smiles or frowns might flash across the face, and expressions are constantly in flux. But when singing a slow-paced song, facial expressions are shown as if in slow motion—or even as if suspended in time—probably intensifying the effects of emotional contagion.

Singing plays an important role in early bonding as it captures and maintains the infant's gaze and attention, prolonging interactions between caregiver and infant—and promoting emotional synchrony (Dissanayake, 2000). Singing can be particularly effective in music therapy for preterm infants, whose attention span is often more fragmented in social interactions.

Singing can also strengthen the caregiver's bond to the infant. It may serve as a tool to help depressed mothers capture and sustain an infant's attention, and train mothers to be more emotionally 'in tune' by imitating the responses of their babies in a singing episode—promoting emotional synchrony between the pair (De L'Etoile, 2006).

Melody and emotion

In the scenario of this viral video, the structure of the song may also be important. In contrast to the mother’s invitation to the song, consisting of three sentences that each rise up in pitch at the end—this song is made up of phrases that generally have a bell-shaped melody. In other words, each phrase of the melody tends to rise up towards a few high tones, and then descend with a pronounced downward sweep.

This bell-shaped melody with a strong downward fall approximates a ‘wailing’ contour that we see in some song structures for (both improvised and composed) mourning songs around the world. It is possible that the bell-shaped contour of the phrases of this song also communicates emotion to the infant, perhaps resembling a 'wailing' quality and eliciting ‘emotional contagion’ through vocal cues.

The highest pitches seem to evoke the strongest responses (and tears) in the infant, not only because the greatest musical intensity comes at the peak of a melody—but also perhaps as the highest tones correspond with the most concentrated facial expressions of the singer.

In the closing moments of the video, the mother soothes the infant with her speech. In contrast to the arousing rising inflections of her invitation before the song, the melody of the speech now descends (like a downward staircase):

"It's just a song. It's just a song."

Amanda Leroux demonstrates that emotional speech is a version of song.

Does this analysis make the video any less magical?

In my view, it may be even more remarkable and more compelling to think that what we are witnessing may not just be the power of the human voice and singing—but a window into how deeply and powerfully we are moved by the emotions of those around us, even in our earliest interactions.

Emotional contagion induced by film characters on screen (especially in close-ups of the face)—and sensitivity to rising and falling melodies in film scores, as well as speech contours—are also mechanisms by which films take us on an emotional journey. If filmed while watching a movie, you might catch yourself mimicking facial expressions of the characters, even though nobody is responding to your smiles and grimaces in the dark.

Mary Lynne Leroux at 10 months is ‘in tune’ with her mother in more ways than one. Through her, we are reminded of how we are inherently social and emotional beings, as well as musical ones.

So why does this baby cry when her mother sings?

For all the same reasons that we are moved when we watch the mother’s emotions so powerfully reflected in the face of this infant.

(To read my analysis of another 'viral video', and why many infants crawl backwards before forwards, please click here )

- by Dr. Siu-Lan Tan 2013. Dr. Tan is first author of a leading textbook entitled Psychology of Music: From Sound to Significance (Psychology Press 2010, 2013).

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Acknowledgments

YouTube link can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIsCs9_-LP8 By Amanda and Alain Leroux. To use this video in a commercial player or broadcast, contact licensing@storyful.com

A version of this post also appears on the Oxford University Press Blog at http://blog.oup.com/2013/11/why-does-this-baby-cry-when-her-mother-sing…
For Further Reading

For more advanced reading on this topic, click on this article.

Hutman, T., & Dapretto, M. (2009). The emergence of empathy during infancy. Cognition, Brain, Behavior, 13, 367-390.