According to a new study, babies can differentiate between sounds from their native language and foreign language much earlier than originally believed. The study shows babies start learning while still in womb, according to a report in Medical Xpress.
The new study shows unborn babies listen to their mother's talk and start absorbing at 30 weeks of gestational age when their brain mechanism is developed.
"The mother has first dibs on influencing the child's brain," said Patricia Kuhl, co-author and co-director of the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences at the University of Washington, according to a report from Medical Xpress. "The vowel sounds in her speech are the loudest units and the fetus locks onto them."
Previous studies have shown babies demonstrate learning ability and differentiate between language sounds just few months after they are born.
"This is the first study that shows fetuses learn prenatally about the particular speech sounds of a mother's language," said Christine Moon, lead author and a professor of psychology at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash. "This study moves the measurable result of experience with speech sounds from six months of age to before birth."
The study included 40 babies both boys and girls of 30 hours old were studied in Tacoma and Stockholm, Sweden. While the babies still in nursery, they listened to vowel sound in their native language and in foreign language.
Researchers looked how long they sucked on a pacifier when heard different sounds. These pacifiers were connected to a computer to measure the babies' reaction. Longer sucking on a pacifier is a response to unfamiliar sounds and shorter sucking for familiar sounds.
Familiar sounds for these 30 hours old babies would be because they have absorbed some sounds while still in the womb. The study results showed that babies sucked for longer when heard foreign language than for native.
"We want to know what magic they put to work in early childhood that adults cannot," Kuhl said. "We can't waste that early curiosity."
The results of this study will be published in the forthcoming issue of the journal Acta Paediatrica.
