Babies begin to learn the language while in their mother’s womb

Previously, newborn babies were believed to begin to distinguish language sounds in their first months of life. In a recent study, scientists found that babies are able to recognize and remember sounds in their mother’s language from the last ten weeks of pregnancy. And babies just hours old are able to differentiate sounds between their native language and a foreign language.

For over 30 years, psychology professors at Pacific Lutheran University have led some research on the subject and found that babies begin to learn and recognize voices still inside the mother’s womb. However, this is the first study that shows babies recognizing sounds they learned before they were born.

Forty boys and girls about 30 hours old were analyzed by the University of Tacoma, Sweden. The babies heard vowels in English and Swedish and were shown to recognize the vowels in their mother tongue. The researchers measured the babies’ interest in the different ways they sucked a special pacifier, connected to a computer when they recognized or not the sounds emitted. It states that the mother has the first influence on the brain of the unborn child and with this study, we can say that since babies we absorb information and carry it throughout our lives. In addition, it has been proven that pregnant mothers should talk to their babies, sing lullabies, or play relaxing songs to entertain them. These are essential tools for newborns to memorize sounds from the outside world. Psychologist George Hollich of Purdue University, Indiana, assessed the influence of outside world noise on babies. In his studies, he came to the conclusion that babies who are born in a noisy home or in places full of noise or traffic, will have lesser skills in vocabulary acquisition.

The children analyzed, demonstrated to recognize the words correctly, even with voices or background noise, however, they are more likely to be distracted by the noise first instead. The fetus has no advantage of seeing the outside world and ends up being confused with different sounds and excessive noises. The statistics in this study showed that babies are stimulated by music, so playing relaxing music will positively influence them in their learning and emotional well-being. The new data from this study also shows an extremely early impact on the acquisition of the native language. Motivated newborns tend to imitate their mother’s behavior which will result in learning and using speech more quickly.

The study, in its final phase, and will be published by Revista Acta Paediatrica.