Language acquisition begins early, a new study shows. According to the study, newborn children are surprisingly familiar with the language they hear from their mother during pregnancy.
When newborns arrive, they already recognize their mom’s voice and the language she used during pregnancy. According to Judit Gervain from the University of Padua in Italy, “We’ve understood for some time that fetuses perceive sounds in the later stages of gestation. Newborns can distinguish their mother’s voice, displaying a preference for it over other female voices, and they can even identify the language their mother spoke during pregnancy.”
In an effort to delve deeper, Gervain and her team monitored the brain activity of 49 babies born to French-speaking mothers, all between one and five days old. Each newborn wore a cap embedded with 10 electrodes placed near brain regions associated with speech perception.
The researchers played recordings consisting of 3 minutes of silence followed by 7-minute segments from the story Goldilocks and the Three Bears in English, French, and Spanish in varying sequences, concluding with another period of silence.
When exposed to the French audio, the infants displayed increased long-range temporal correlation brain signals, which are connected to speech perception and processing. These signals diminished when the babies heard other languages.
In the subset of 17 babies who heard French as the final language, the team observed that this surge in neural activity persisted during the subsequent silent interval.
This tells us that babies might already think their mom’s language is super important for them to learn. Gervain thinks it’s like a head start for picking up their native language: “Essentially, it serves as a catalyst for mastering their native language.”
The team aims to further their research by involving infants whose mothers speak different languages, particularly those from Asian or African backgrounds, to ascertain the applicability of these findings. Additionally, they intend to explore variations in the development of speech perception in infants with atypical prenatal experiences, like premature birth.
“Of course, it’s nice to talk to the belly,” says Gervain. “But we show that even just natural, everyday activities like shopping or talking to the neighbour is already enough speech to act as a scaffolding for their baby’s learning.”
Source: we have adapted this article from pieces on spiegel.de and newscientist.com