The fetus already distinguishes between languages in the womb

The fetus already distinguishes between languages in the womb
The fetus already distinguishes between languages in the womb
Anonim
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The fetus senses when it is spoken to in two languages already in the womb, and those who regularly heard several languages before birth will be more open to bilingualism. In the American-French research cited on Yahoo, two groups of newborns were examined: newborns who only heard English in the womb, and those who heard both English and Tagalog (a Filipino language).

In the study, the suckling reflex of newborns was monitored, because its intensity indicates the baby's attention: the newborn reacts to stimuli that interest him with an increased sucking reflex. In the first experiment, they spoke to the newborns for ten minutes, alternating between English and Tagalog every minute, and observed that the sucking reflex of the babies who only heard English in the womb was activated only when they heard English, they did not respond to Tagalog.

However, the child of bilingual parents paid attention to both, which proves to the researchers that the fetus perceives already in the womb that its parents speak two different languages and must pay attention to both.

In the next step, the researchers were interested in whether the babies could distinguish between the two languages. To test this, they started talking to the newborns, and when the babies lost interest in speaking, they either continued speaking in another language, or another person spoke to them in the same language. The babies' sucking reflex was only activated when they heard the other language, which made it clear that they can distinguish between languages.

So the researchers found it proven that both monolingual and bilingual babies can distinguish between languages, and this allows them not to confuse languages from the first minute.

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