# Effects of enriched parent-infant interaction on health in early life

> **NIH NIH R21** · YALE UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $251,250

## Abstract

PROJECT SUMMARY
Early life experiences, such as those associated with stable attachment, supportive relationships, and nurturing
environments, have profound effects on lifelong physical and mental health. However, children have very
different levels of access to such experiences, depending on their family characteristics and associated risk
and resilience factors. Low-cost interventions aimed at improving infant environments offer a promising avenue
for reducing inequality in early experiences because they require minimal effort to implement. Previous work
from our lab showed the promise of infant-directed vocalizations, especially music, for enriching parent-infant
interaction. Such behaviors are cross-culturally universal, appear regularly in the context of infant care, and
have robust effects on infant psychophysiology. In recently completed pilot work, we found that a brief
smartphone-based music intervention achieved high adherence and low attrition; led parents to increase their
use of music in soothing their fussy infants; and improved infant mood, as reported via ecological momentary
assessment (EMA). Together, these findings show the potential for enriched parent-infant interaction,
particularly via infant-directed singing, to improve infant and parent health. Here, we propose a Phase II
randomized trial to explore such effects. Parent/infant dyads (N = 192, infant starting ages 0 to 4 months) will
be randomly assigned to one of four conditions: (1) music with enrichment, where parents receive a
smartphone-based intervention to learn to sing interactively with their infants, via the early childhood music
program Music Together; (2) music with limited enrichment, where parents receive music recordings to listen to
with their infants, but are not provided with enrichment activities; (3) enrichment with limited music, where
parents receive books to read interactively with their infants, but are not provided with music activities; or (4) a
no-treatment control. Throughout the 8-month study, we will use text-message-based EMA and a survey
battery to measure key health outcomes for both infants (distress and recovery, sleep quality, and mood) and
parents (mood, mental health status, and parenting efficacy); potential moderators of such effects
(demographics, family contextual factors, parent/infant attachment, and infant temperament); as well as
parents' degree of engagement in the interventions. Effects will be analyzed both across the intervention
groups and relative to the no-treatment control to determine the relative effects of each intervention. The
results of this work will determine the effects of low-cost, low-effort early enrichment interventions on basic,
everyday health outcomes for infants and parents, test the feasibility of app-based interventions and data
collection tools (including in socio-economically disadvantaged families), and provide rich data on the daily
lives (including mood, temperament, and sleep variables) of famil...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10988509
- **Project number:** 1R21HD113998-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** YALE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Samuel A Mehr
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $251,250
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2024-08-12 → 2026-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10988509

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10988509, Effects of enriched parent-infant interaction on health in early life (1R21HD113998-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-06-13 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10988509. Licensed CC0.

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