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Yes, that will be pretty much what I said.
What the article quoted (I think from the Telegraph, no source cited) said was:
"It was already known that foetuses can memorise sounds from the outside world and are especially sensitive to the melodic characteristics of both music and human speech."
Not at all the same thing. And that's what I was referring to in the first place.
And there really really are no babies in wombs ...
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Surely a baby in the womb isn't just hearing it's mother's voice through water.
Unlike sounds from the 'outside' ie music, the baby would hear vibrations of the mother's body etc, and hear the voice from a different perspective to that of 'outside' noise. Vibrations travel through water, and the mother's voice is, surely, 'internal' to the baby.
After all, no-one has said that the child responded to the father's voice - external noise, similar to music.
Try talking with your hand on your chest. does your chest vibrate?
That would be internal noise to the baby.
So, just because one academic says music won't make your baby more intelligent, doesn't mean the baby can't hear inflections in it's mother's voice!
They're two totally different studies.
Oh, and academics can be wrong!!
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perhaps it is the lower (vocal)frequencies that travel better through the watery medium? after all it is said that whales can communicate over many miles due to their low frequency "musical" calls.....??
Bob
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Ask a submariner if you like, Len.
I quoted a scientist who appears to be a bit of an authority.
"If we play sounds loudly - really loud - the 30-week-old fetuses will move to it, but we don't get any response prior to 30 weeks," says Dr. Kisilevsky. "What we still don't know is what they hear, or how clearly they distinguish various sounds."
I always prefer authoritative sources.
I wouldn't dispute the report of infants crying "with an accent". What was actually referred to is the inflexion, rather than "accent". That speech pattern would quite reasonably be communicated to a fetus in late pregnancy, as sound originating and ending within the woman's own body; and the surmise "Newborns are probably highly motivated to imitate their mother's behaviour in order to attract her and hence to foster bonding" makes perfect sense.
If you want to comment on something I've said, do feel free to address me directly.
Just to add: anecdotal evidence is not actually evidence, even when it comes from the mouth of an MD.
Name Dr Diana Riley
Job title Consultant Psychiatrist
Primary specialty Psychiatry
Qualifications
MBBS
MRCS
LRCP
DPM
FRCPsych
>>> Clinical interests
• Psychiatric problems associated with pregnancy
• The puerperium and gynaecological complaints
*not* prenatal development.
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There's a lot of bunk in the above post - for instance sound travels very well through water ask any submariner.
Dr Diana Riley, Consultant Psychiatrist informed me that babies often positively respond to the music associated with popular soaps (e.g.Neighbours") that they heard daily in the maternity wards, prior to birth.
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Just to note that the idea that fetuses hear music, let alone respond to it, is the utmost bunkum. In spite of all the expensive devices pregnant women buy to play Mozart for their fetuses.
Imagine yourself trying to hear Mozart through water ...
http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20000824233046data_trunc_sys.shtml
"If we play sounds loudly - really loud - the 30-week-old fetuses will move to it, but we don't get any response prior to 30 weeks," says Dr. Kisilevsky. "What we still don't know is what they hear, or how clearly they distinguish various sounds."
Ultimately, says Dr. Kisilevsky, the team hopes to determine if what the fetus hears influences its development. "We suspect that the mother's voice, and what the fetus hears has an impact on its development - that it shapes the infant to prefer and recognize its native language. But we still don't know if your child will be brighter, for example, if you play music to it in utero, despite the notions disseminated in the popular media.
Today many entrepreneurs talk about "fetal universities," and sell devices that adhere to the abdomen and transmit music and information to the fetus. But is this trend based on good science?
"We don't know if women should be using these devices," says Dr. Kisilevsky. "We don't know what they should be playing, how long, or how loud." In fact, animal studies have shown that when audio or visual stimulation is provided to chicks in utero, there is a temporary delay in hearing when they are born.
And of course, an "unborn baby" is much like an unbaked cake: it doesn't exist. A baby is there from birth onward; prior to that, it is a fetus. Scientists don't use mush words like "unborn baby" when they discuss their work.
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That's fascinating Len. So much must mould a child from before birth as they hear and experience so much while in the womb.
Lizx
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Researchers found that babies pick up the national nuances of their mother tongue in the last three months of pregnancy. They discovered that newborn infants in France and Germany cry with French and German "accents".
The findings suggest that unborn babies are influenced by the sounds – especially their mother's voice – penetrating the wall of the womb. It was already known that foetuses can memorise sounds from the outside world and are especially sensitive to the melodic characteristics of both music and human speech. However, scientists previously thought language traits did not begin to have an influence until much later.
Dr Kathleen Wermke, the study leader from the University of Würzburg in Germany, said the findings showed that babies' cries reflected the "ambient language they have heard" in the womb. Dr Wermke's team recorded and studied the cries of 60 healthy babies aged three to five days born into French and German-speaking families. Their analysis revealed clear differences in the shape of the infants' cry melodies that corresponded to their mother tongue.
French newborns tended to cry with a rising melodic pattern while German newborns cried with a falling inflection. The different patterns were consistent with the characteristics of both languages, said Dr Wermke. Earlier studies showed that infants can match vowel sounds made by adult speakers but only from the age of 12 weeks after developing the necessary physical vocal control.
Dr Wermke, who reported her findings in the journal Current Biology, said that babies mimicked their mother in order to "foster bonding". "Newborns are probably highly motivated to imitate their mother's behaviour in order to attract her and hence to foster bonding," she said.
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