Infant-directed singing has unique acoustic characteristics that may allow even very young infants to respond to the rhythms carried through the caregiver’s voice. The goal of this study was to examine neural and movement responses to live and dynamic maternal singing in 7-month-old infants and their relation to linguistic development. In total, 60 mother-infant dyads were observed during two singing conditions (playsong and lullaby). In Study 1 (n = 30), we measured infant EEG and used an encoding approach utilizing ridge regressions to measure neural tracking. In Study 2 (n =40), we coded infant rhythmic movements. In both studies, we assessed children’s vocabulary when they were 20 months old. In Study 1, we found above-threshold neural tracking of maternal singing, with superior tracking of lullabies than playsongs. We also found that the acoustic features of infant-directed singing modulated tracking. In Study 2, infants showed more rhythmic movement to playsongs than lullabies. Importantly, neural coordination (Study 1) and rhythmic movement (Study 2) to playsongs were positively related to infants’ expressive vocabulary at 20 months. These results highlight the importance of infants’ brain and movement coordination to their caregiver’s musical presentations, potentially as a function of musical variability.

针对婴儿的歌唱具有独特的声学特征，即使是非常年幼的婴儿也可以对护理人员声音中的节奏做出反应。本研究的目的是检查 7 个月大婴儿对现场动态母亲歌声的神经和运动反应及其与语言发展的关系。在两种歌唱条件（游戏歌曲和摇篮曲）下总共观察到了 60 个母婴二人组。在研究 1（n  = 30）中，我们测量了婴儿脑电图，并使用利用岭回归的编码方法来测量神经跟踪。在研究 2（n  = 40）中，我们对婴儿的节律运动进行了编码。在这两项研究中，我们评估了儿童 20 个月大时的词汇量。在研究 1 中，我们发现对母亲歌唱的神经跟踪高于阈值，对摇篮曲的跟踪优于戏剧歌曲。我们还发现婴儿定向歌唱的声学特征会调节跟踪。在研究 2 中，婴儿在播放歌曲时表现出比摇篮曲更多的有节奏的动作。重要的是，演奏歌曲时的神经协调（研究 1）和节奏运动（研究 2）与 20 个月婴儿的表达词汇量呈正相关。这些结果强调了婴儿的大脑和运动协调对其护理人员的音乐表现的重要性，可能是音乐变异性的函数。