Abstract
A review of several studies indicates in utero experience influences infant's preference for maternal voice. Sensory development in the prenatal period allows the baby to engage the environment socially at birth and before. The tactile sense is the first to develop parentally and the most refined sense at birth. Auditory development is completed during the prenatal period. Auditory ability gives us the clearest picture of prenatal learning. Newborn babies show a marked preference for voices heard during the prenatal period. DeCasper and Spence (1986) demonstrated that babies recognize a story read to them twice a day in the last six weeks of pregnancy when compared to an unfamiliar story that was heard for the first time after birth. A study by DeCasper and Fiefer (1980) indicates that infants as young as three days old prefer their mothers voice which may be a result of their prenatal exposure to the maternal voice. A third study by Kisilevsky et al (2003) tied the results of the two previous studies together. It revealed that the baby shows a preference for the mother's voice while in utero. A fourth study by Purhonen et al (2003) was reviewed and also indicates that infants show a preference for their mother's voice as compared to an unfamiliar voice. A final study by Ward and Cooper (1999) was reviewed. It concluded that infants do not show the same preference for their father's voice as they do for their mother's.
In Utero Experience Influences Infant's Preference for Maternal Voice
The uterus is not exactly the quietest place. Not only can a baby hear the sounds of his mom's body - her stomach growling, heart beating, the occasional hiccup or burp - but he can also hear noises from beyond. If...
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...tant developmental component in prenatal life because they provide a foundation for later learning and behavior.
References
DeCasper, A. J., & Fifer, W. P. (1980). Of human bonding: Newborns prefer their mothers' voices. Science. 208,1174-1176.
DeCasper, A. J., & Spence, M. J. (1986). Newborns prefer a familiar story over an unfamiliar one. Infant Behavior and Development. 9, 133-150.
Kisilevsky et al. (2003). Experiences in the womb help shape your newborn preferences and behavior. Psychological Science. June, 34-38
Purhonen et al. (2003). Cerebral processing of the mother's voice compared to unfamiliar voice in 4-month-old infants. International Journal of Psychophysiology. 52 (3), 257-266.
Ward, C., & Cooper, R. (1999). A Lack of Evidence in 4-Month-Old Human Infants for Paternal Voice Preference. Journal of Deviance in Psychobiology. 35, 49-59.
In 1976 Marshall H. Klaus and John H. Kennell came out with a book called “Parent Infant Bonding”. It discussed their hypothesis that like other animals, there is a brief moment directly following the birth of a child where skin-to-skin contact between mother and offspring creates a strong bond. Although this theory continues to be supported by many, some criticized the process of Klaus and Kennell’s studies. Some of these criticisms likely came from their definition of a “critical” time period after birth.
Shaffer, D. R., & Kipp, K. (2014). Infancy. In Developmental psychology: Childhood and adolescence (p. 158). Australia: Wadsworth.
In various movies and TV films, such as Friends, Juno, and Baby Mama, filmmakers have depicted people talking to the belly of a pregnant woman. Most of the time, it is portrayed in order to add humor to the scene. Although, a baby can hear his mother; not only can the baby hear his mother, but also learn the language she speaks to him. According to Denise Mann in “Babies Listen and Learn While in the Womb,” a mother gives “her son [child] a foundation for language development” (2013). As a mother, pre-birth care is vital to the development of a child. Babies begin to absorb the language their mother speaks “during the last 10 weeks of pregnancy” (Mann 2013). We’ve always known babies can hear sounds, but what is special about the mother’s voice?
... middle of paper ... ... Studies have determined that some infants can rectify these behavioral inconsistencies, but that the change is dependent upon a responsive caregiver in a nurturing environment. The birth of a healthy child is a blessing.
Mccarthy, Laura F. "What Babies Learn In the Womb." Parenting. Meredith Corporation, 2014. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.
The attachment style that a child endures with their mother initially begins before the child is even born. In the mother’s womb, the infant becomes aware of their mother and father’s voices, where they begin to develop a bond with them and feel nurtured and comforted by the things they hear their parents sing and speak to them. According to Bowlby, the development of attachment takes place in four different phases and are reinforced as they grow older from the Preattachment (birth to age 6 weeks), attachment-in-the-making (age 6 weeks to 8 months), clear cut attachment (between 8 months to 1 ½ years of age) and the reciprocal relationship (from 1 ½ or 2 and on). As the child grows older, then begin to understand their parent’s feelings and motives and are able to organize their efforts and reciprocate the same i...
According to the American Psychological Society, there is evidence that early mother-child bonding results in positive
The mother reports remembering her daughter babbling, but says she did not say her first word until much later on than her first child. She said that this was a concern for her and that she discussed it with her pediatrician who did not see any cause for alarm at the time. When t...
Neuronal plasticity found in infants, and the learning process has been of keen interest to neurobiologists for some time. How does the brain develop and attain the skills we need as one grows is fascinating. It is commonly understood that a crying infant can only be consoled by his/her mother, and is able to recognize her voice over the voice of a stranger. A number of studies have also been done on the distinct reaction of infants to sounds of their own language versus a foreign language, familiar melodies or fragments of stories they may have heard repeatedly during the fetus stage (Partanen et. al, 2013). However, these studies relied heavily on the infant’s reactions, which bared little credibility (Skwarecki, 2013). One research team developed a technique to show that infants actually develop memory of the sounds they hear while in the womb, and are able to recognize the similar sounds at the time of birth. The team was able to trace changes in brain activity in new born infants, and thus provided quantitative evidence that memory forms before birth (Partanen et. al, 2013). This paper begins by examining the literature that identifies associations between MMR used as a tool to measure auditory input and Exposure to Psuedoword and how its varations create memory traces.
As early as six weeks, newborn children will start to spontaneously make cooing sounds. These expanded sounds look like vowel sounds. At this stage babies are figuring out how to make sounds by controlling their tongues, mouths, and relaxing. This cooing conduct may happen when the child is distant from everyone else and obviously shows the baby is trying different things with making sounds. These vowel-like sounds happen sooner than the consonant-like sounds in light of the fact that the vowel-like sounds are delivered with less enunciation than are the consonant sounds (Zhou, L. 2014).
In the process of human infants’ development, infants start to learn how to communicate with the others at the surprising early age, for example: Newborns can follow objects to make saccades to peripheral targets (Farroni et al., 2004);Infants’ responding eye gaze behaviour increase constantly since two months old (Scaife & Bruner, 1975); Cooper and Aslin pointed out that this preference showed up as early as the infants were one month old in 1990. Infants not only can respond to eye contact, vocal cues also are used for gaining more reference information during a communication, particularly when the speech is conducted forward to the infants. It had been reported in many studies that infants show more preference to infant-directed communication
Cooper, R. P., & Aslin, R. N. (1990). Preference for infant-directed speech in the first month after birth. Child Development , 61(5), 1584-1595.
There is no voice more comforting than Mama’s. In the womb we are suspended in safe warmth, hearing every noise that Mama makes. And we don’t just hear her voice. We feel its vibrations, its muffled hum, through our ears and our entire forming bodies. It’s no wonder that that is often the only voice that can comfort us in the distress of our new little lives. Yet, what of the mother who cannot speak? Can she still comfort her baby? Yes, because it is much more than vocal chords that connect a baby with its birth mother. After all, Baby eats all that Mama eats, breathes Mama’s air, knows Mama’s way of moving and laughing…Baby feels every surge of adrenaline that Mama feels. Bonds don’t get more intimate than that. Even after Baby is born, this bond is strengthened through long bouts of staring into each other’s eyes, through feeling the lulling rhythm of Mama’s breathing while sleeping against her chest, through time spent together saturated in touch and play. This phenomenon of intimacy is so powerful that it surpasses any blindness or handicap Mama could possibly have.
Babies begin to develop language skills long before they embark on speaking. The foundation for learning language begins before birth by the baby listening and recognizing his/her mother’s heartbeat and voice in the womb. “In a study, researchers played a 2-minute recording of a popular Chinese poem to 60 pregnant women and their unborn babies while monitoring total heart rates. Heart rates rose while the babies listened to their own mother's voice, but they fell and stayed lower while the stranger recited. Obviously, the babies were paying close attention, leading the researchers to suspect they were not only recognizing morn, but beginning to learn the ins and outs of language” (Dawidowska and Harrar (2003))....
The article “Nature and Nurture in Language Acquisition: Anatomical and Functional Brain-Imaging Studies in Infants” by Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz, Lucie Hertz-Pannier, and Jessica Dubois focuses on the study of the left hemisphere of the brain, which is where language is processed. Neuroimaging of infants’ brains show how words that are heard are sorted through in certain regions and how infants uncover characteristics of their native language. Dehaene-Lambertz also points out that it is advantageous for fetus to be exposed to speech while still in the womb. An important point is made when Dehaene-Lambertz and her colleagues establish that “human brains before intense exposure to speech have things in common with the brains of mature and linguistically competent human adults” (367). It is noted that certain parts in the cranial cavity of the brain, such as the auditory cortex, are bigger on the left side than on the right side, giving the cerebrum a slightly asymmetric structure in both the children and adults. Also, this finding is confirmed by Chomsky when he states that “such an organical structure as of the brain” (176) is capable of processing and generating human language. Since an infant’s brain is extremely similar to the adults’ cerebrum that have already mastered language communication, this proves that the infant’s brain is capable of the