Italian scientists from the University of Padua have discovered that babies begin their language learning journey before they are even born. The study was published in the scientific journal magazine Science Advances (SciAdv).
According to previous research, unborn children can perceive sounds outside the mother’s body starting from the seventh month of pregnancy. They can recognize their mother’s voice and even pick up on the rhythms and melodies of speech in the womb.
Thirty-three newborn babies whose mothers were native French speakers participated in the new study. Babies were shown French, English and Spanish versions of the children’s story Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and their brain activity was measured using encephalography (EEG).
A key finding of the study was that it showed increased long-term temporal correlations (LRTCs) in the brain oscillations of infants who last listened to French. These LRTCs are associated with speech perception and processing. In other words, exposure to French soon after birth had a noticeable effect on the babies’ neural activity.
The researchers used a method called detrended oscillatory analysis (DFA) to measure the strength of LRTC in children’s brain activity. They observed that LRTCs were specifically enhanced in the theta band, which is associated with units of speech at the syllable level. This finding is consistent with the idea that babies’ brains are tuned to the linguistic elements they are exposed to in the womb.
The study also examined whether the effects of language exposure were specific to the language spoken during the prenatal period. While infants listening to French showed a significant increase in LRTC after exposure, the same effect was not seen in infants listening to Spanish or English. This suggests that prenatal language experience plays a role in shaping newborns’ neural responses to language.
The findings of the study indicate that children have the ability to quickly learn and process language before they are born. The study also suggests that the human brain may be optimized for efficient language processing, which may underlie the impressive language learning abilities observed in infants.
Previous scientists I learnedHow to improve the development of the speech centers of the brain in babies.