Healthy Preterm Infant Responses to Taped Maternal Voice

Abstract

This study was a repeated measures design, examining behavioral and physiologic responses of premature infants to taped maternal voice. Fourteen stable, premature infants, 31 to 34 weeks' gestation and serving as their own controls, were monitored and videotaped 4 times each day for 3 consecutive days during the first week of their life. There were no significant differences found in heart rate or oxygen saturation between study conditions. Behavioral data revealed less motor activity and more wakefulness, while hearing the maternal tape, suggesting some influence on infant state regulation. Attending behaviors were significantly greater, with more eye brightening and facial tone. Minimal distress was seen throughout the study, as indicated by stable heart rate and oxygen saturation and by the absence of behaviors such as jitteriness, loss of tone, or loss of color. The results of this preliminary study suggest that premature infants are capable of attending to tape recordings of their mother's voice.

Language Exposure of Preterm Infants in the Neonatal Unit: A Systematic Review

“…Bozzette [44] found no significant differences in HR between the three time segments. Filippa et al [40] found that the HR was lower at baseline than in the singing or speaking conditions (146.3 vs. 149.7; p = 0.049) and no significant differences were found between the singing and speaking conditions (149.5 vs. 149.8).…”

“…The results showed lower SpO 2 after heel lance in the voice condition compared to the control condition (94.1 vs. 96.2%; p < 0.01). Bozzette [44] found no significant differences in SpO 2 between the three time segments (before, during or after the intervention). Filippa et al [40] found lower SpO 2 at baseline than in the singing and speaking conditions (95.7 vs. 96.4%; p = 0.03).…”

“…Seven studies were rated weak by the review authors [38-40, 42-44, 48], 2 were rated moderate [41,47], and 3 were rated strong [26,45,46]. The study designs included 1 randomised controlled trial [48], 3 controlled clinical trials [39,42,45], 1 cohort study [43], 2 case-control trials [26,41], 4 interrupted time series [40,44,46,47] and 1 crossover trial [38]. Most of the sample sizes were small and assessed as either "somewhat likely" or "not likely" to be representative of the target population.…”

“…Two studies used the live maternal voice as the exposure stimulus [26,40], one used the recorded maternal voice via a bone conduction device attached to the participant's wrist [41] and all other studies used the recorded maternal voice delivered by tape recorder [48], micro speaker [38,39,42,[45][46][47] or earphones [43,44]. Five studies filtered the maternal voice through a low-pass filter prior to the intervention and combined it with biological sounds and heartbeats to replicate the in utero environment [38,42,[45][46][47].…”

“…These were categorised by study type and included 3 observational studies in 4 published articles (Table 2) [22][23][24]37] and 6 language intervention studies (Table 3) [26,[38][39][40][41][42]. The reference lists of all included articles were searched and 6 additional intervention studies [43][44][45][46][47][48] were determined to be eligible for inclusion.…”