How early do babies start learning language? researchers at the University of Oregon wondered, the French newspaper Le Monde reports. Their findings were published in the Aug. 26 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, here, but American newspapers haven’t exactly picked it up yet.
In infancy, we know the sounds babies hear form long-term memory traces. This improves their discrimination skills, particularly those relevant for speech perception and understanding. The current study shows direct evidence from the brain that sounds heard by fetuses (while still in the womb) also form memory traces.
The sound-oriented prenatal experiences have a remarkable influence on the brain’s ability to distinguish one type of sound from another, researchers discovered. And here’s the good news: this finding suggests it may be possible to facilitate language acquisition during infancy by “training” the brains of fetuses. For example, in certain genetic language disorders, like dyslexia, we might be able to compensate for difficulties and make it easier for children to overcome the disorder.
For the experiment, beginning in the 29th week of the pregnancy, research subjects, a k a expectant mothers, played a CD for their babies. The CD played the made-up word “tatata” over and over. After the happy event, doctors hooked the newborns up to an electroencephalogram and played the CD. Those babies who had been “trained” with the CD before birth showed brain activity that was different enough from the babies in the control group to lead researchers to conclude that the babies had formed memories of the sound while they were still in the womb.
Now, I’m not suggesting that we can teach fetuses how to speak in sentences before they’re born or anything like that. It just means fetuses pick up some memories of things like sounds, rhythms, pitches, inflections, etc., of the mother tongue while they’re still fetuses.
Understanding how fetuses form memories may allow us, one day, to give doctors a head start on improving language acquisition in infants who are genetically at risk for dyslexia. But the researchers were quick to note that the finding has another, darker side:
“Si un fætus est exposé à des environnements bruyants ou des environnements dont le son n’est pas structuré, comme par exemple sur le lieu de travail de la mère enceinte, cette expérience peut entraîner chez le nourrisson une organisation aberrante des structures centrales de son système auditif, ce qui pourrait par la suite affecter sa perception et son apprentissage du langage.” Ces chercheurs préconisent donc de faire attention à l’environnement sonore de l’enfant et ce même lorsqu’il est invisible, avant sa naissance.
That is, if a fetus is exposed to noisy environments, such as those where the mother works, the auditory centers in the brain can get wired up in a faulty manner. That could ultimately affect the child’s ability to acquire learning through auditory channels, which is how we learn our language. Researchers therefore recommend paying attention to sounds in your surroundings, even before your baby is born.
Some good advice, mom: Don’t put yourself in too many noisy places while you’re pregnant, and your child may have a brain that’s better suited to learning and understanding language.
