The Max
Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, the Centre
for Pre-language Development and Developmental Disorders at the University
Clinic Würzburg, and the Laboratory of Cognitive Sciences and Linguistics at
the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris conducted a study that compared the
melodies of newborns.
The study used 30 infants from both French and German mothers. These languages were used because of the distinct tonal differences between the languages—French tone rises while German tone falls.
One theory for why this occurs is that hearing is the first sensory system to develop in a fetus during pregnancy. Angela Friederici, one of the Directors at the Max Planck Institute said in an interveiw, "The mother’s voice, in particular, is sensed early on." Because the hearing of the fetus is restricted by the amniotic fluid, "What gets through are primarily the melodies and intonation of the respective language".
After more than 20 hours of babies crying and analysis, it was concluded; the tone of an infant’s cry is directly related to its mother's native language. The study found the patterns of an infant's cry follows the tonal patterns of inflection and deflection of their mother’s language.
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| Cry pattern comparison between French and German Infants |
One theory for why this occurs is that hearing is the first sensory system to develop in a fetus during pregnancy. Angela Friederici, one of the Directors at the Max Planck Institute said in an interveiw, "The mother’s voice, in particular, is sensed early on." Because the hearing of the fetus is restricted by the amniotic fluid, "What gets through are primarily the melodies and intonation of the respective language".
After more than 20 hours of babies crying and analysis, it was concluded; the tone of an infant’s cry is directly related to its mother's native language. The study found the patterns of an infant's cry follows the tonal patterns of inflection and deflection of their mother’s language.
That is soo cool!!! I remember when my wife was pregnant, we would read to her belly. All the books say the same thing, that the sound of your voice will help soothe the baby in the womb, and also help it recognize your voice tone later once it is born. It makes sense that the native tongue would produce different wave patterns. Again, this was cool to read!!! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteVery interesting! I also looked at an article that talked about babies amazing early language super powers. It seems like babies are sponges for learning a new first language.
ReplyDeleteI assume the reason babies have this ability comes from the idea that humans depend on language to survive unlike any other species. This is a very interesting topic!