What Your Newborn Knows at Birth
Written By Kevin Markey
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At birth, babies have some 100 to 200 billion brain cells in place — more than they will ever have again, and all they will ever need. We were amazed to learn what they can already do with all that brainpower.
Newborns Know Their Language
In short order, newborns learn to recognize the language being spoken around them, as well as the voice speaking it. By four days old, they can distinguish their native tongue from others and show a marked preference for it. "It was first demonstrated with French babies," says Linda Acredolo, Ph.D., professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California at Davis and co-author of Baby Minds. Researchers played tapes of pleasant singsongy things in French and in Russian, and the newborns demonstrated (by slowing or accelerating sucking on their pacifer) that they preferred their native lingua franca.
"It's mostly the musical quality that they respond to," says Lise Eliot, Ph.D., a neuroscientist at the Chicago Medical School and author of What's Going on in There: How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life.
By the time newborns enter the world, they've been listening to the rhythms of Mom's speech for months, ever since hearing began to kick in at the beginning of the third trimester. The specific cadences of their native language are like those catchy songs that get stuck in our heads, only not at all annoying. "It's not surprising that babies prefer their mother's voice," says Eliot. "Her voice is transmitted directly through her lungs and certainly more effectively than anything else."
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