Babies May Begin Learning Language in the Womb, New Study Suggests
Newborn babies may have a head start in language learning, according to a groundbreaking study. Researchers at the University of Padua in Italy have found evidence that infants can recognize their mother tongue and show a preference for it over other languages shortly after birth. This discovery implies that exposure to language in the uterus may lay the foundations for language acquisition.
Lead researcher Judit Gervain explains, We’ve known for a while that fetuses hear towards the end of gestation. [Newborn babies] can recognize their mother’s voice and prefer it over other female voices, and they can even recognize the language their mother spoke during pregnancy.
To dive deeper into this subject, Gervain and her team conducted experiments on 49 newborns with French-speaking mothers. The infants, aged between one and five days old, wore a small cap fitted with electrodes to monitor brain activity in regions associated with speech perception.
During the experiment, the researchers played different recordings, including excerpts from the story Goldilocks and the Three Bears in English, French, and Spanish. The results revealed a spike in a specific brain signal called long-range temporal correlations when the babies listened to the French audio. This signal is closely linked to speech perception and processing. Interestingly, the neural activity remained high even during the following silence for the babies who heard French last.
Gervain explains that these findings suggest babies recognize their mother’s native language as more important, giving them a boost in learning it. She states, It’s essentially a boost for learning their native language.
Moving forward, the team plans to expand their research to include babies whose mothers speak languages from different regions, such as Asia and Africa. They aim to explore the generalizability of their results and investigate how prenatal speech perception development varies for infants with atypical prenatal experiences, such as premature babies.
Gervain highlights the significance of everyday activities, saying, Of course, it’s nice to talk to the belly. But we show that even just natural, everyday activities like shopping or talking to the neighbor is already enough speech to act as a scaffolding for their baby’s learning.
This groundbreaking study sheds light on the incredible capabilities of newborn babies and how they may possess language learning skills even before birth. By recognizing their mother tongue, infants demonstrate their remarkable ability to absorb and process information from the moment they come into the world.
