Language is a crucial part of every culture across the world. There are various components that go into each language to make them unique and allow speakers to communicate. From a young age children begin to understand the characteristics of spoken languages. Regardless of what language a child learns, they begin to pick up the intonation of familiar voices far before they say their first words. Intonation is the natural rise and fall in a voice while a person speaks. So, when during development does a baby begin distinguishing these precursors of learning a language? It turns out that at around the third trimester of pregnancy, the baby’s ears are rapidly developing and he or she begins to hear the sounds around them (Timmons & Kim, 2015). However, because the baby is surrounded by fluids all voices are muffled and no distinct words can be heard. The child can still start to recognize patterns of speech such as familiar cadences, or the rhythmic flow of sounds. The most obvious example of this would be the mother’s voice. Mother and child are together all the time while the baby is in utero; therefore, hearing a mother’s voice repeatedly allows babies to recognize it before and after they are born.

Despite the fact that children in utero cannot communicate to the outside world, research has found that they can recognize their mother’s voice. How did researchers discover this early language-learning concept? There are a few different ways to best test the theory of prenatal maternal speech recognition. The most common method researchers use is monitoring the baby’s heart rate while he or she is still in utero. DeCasper and his team of researchers took a group of pregnant women and asked them to recite a simple children’s rhyme during their last 33 to 37 weeks of gestation. After the fetuses were accustomed to listening to the nursery rhyme every day through their mother’s voices, the researchers stimulated the prenatal children with tape-recorded sounds of the same nursery rhyme. Results showed that fetal heart rate decreased when listening to the tape recording of their mother speaking the rhyme. Fetal heart rate did not change when listening to the recording of a random researcher speaking the rhyme (DeCasper, Lecanuet, Busnel, Granier-Deferre, & Maugeais, 1994). These results show that even before birth, children can make distinctions between different people talking and can identify comforting voices. This is the first step into language learning and plays a key role for development in post-natal life (DeCasper et al. 1994). If infants can come out of the womb and already feel comfortable with their parent’s voices and intonations, then the next steps to speaking should go smoothly.

Measuring fetal heart rate while still in utero is a widely used measure when looking at fetal reactions. Increase in heart rate can be a sign of distress or excitement while decrease can be a sign of relaxation. If a prenatal baby and mother are quiet and resting and quiet both heart rates will drop, but when that mother begins to read aloud the baby will respond with an increase in movement and elevated heart rate. If the mother is talking aloud already and settles into a passage to the baby, the fetus’s heart rate will show an orienting response. This means that the heart rate will decrease and the baby will become more relaxed (Voegtline, Costigan, Pater & DiPietro, 2013). This was tested in an experiment using a similar heart rate monitoring system to the first study. However, this study introduces a new factor that involves observing the fetal and maternal states in relation to when the heart rates were monitored. Prior to the experiment, mothers were divided into a resting group or a talking group. It is important to note that both groups showed changes in fetal heart rate when the mothers began reading the neutral passage they were given (Voegtline et al., 2013). The babies were able to identify a tone change in their mother’s voice when she began to recite the passage after already speaking and after she had been silent. This study supports the idea that in the third trimester fetuses are more than capable of identifying speech patterns in their mother’s spoken language. Once they are born, children will transition not only from recognizing these speech patterns in familiar voices, but everywhere around them. Language development will skyrocket and children will be well on their way to speaking by the age of two.

Once a woman gives birth to her child the language preferences of that child are based off what they heard in the womb. To show whether or not this statement was true a team of researchers tested a group of pregnant women through their last trimester and again following birth. Women recited the same passage every day to their fetuses in the last six weeks of their pregnancy (DeCasper & Spence, 1986). After the children were born they listened to a recording of the passage in a woman’s voice and a new story in the same women’s voice. Results were recorded with a nonnutritive nipple that measured their sucking pressures as they listened to the recordings of both stories (DeCasper & Spence, 1986). The newborns were more attentive to the passage that matched the one their mothers had been reading to them for the past six weeks and therefore sucking pressures were higher (DeCasper & Spence, 1986). This study is evidence that newborns can recognize not only voices but specific speech elements that make up a story. As long as they hear the patterns of intonation from their mother repeatedly before birth, children can continue to pick up on these patterns after birth. Children learn to talk by listening to their parents repeat words to them, in an effort to try and make them copy the sounds. Repeatedly reading to a child when he or she is still in utero follows these same concepts to familiarize them with the language they will learn soon after birth.

When children are young, mothers typically talk in slow simple sentences using a gentle voice to help the child understand what they are trying to say. This soft, exaggerated, melodic speech is called ‘motherese.’ Motherese is commonly referred to as ‘baby talk’ and is universal across cultures when teaching children to speak. It has been found that characteristics of mother to baby speech include higher pitch, wider pitch variances, longer pauses, shorter words, and more prosodic repetition when compared to mother to adult speech (Fernald & Simon, 1984). This embellished, rhythmic method of talking to newborns helps regulate their attention and receptiveness to speech prior to them learning to speak themselves (Fernald & Simon, 1984). Infant’s prenatal experience with maternal speech is similar to motherese. A newborn’s knowledge of language in the womb is limited to the muffled acoustic tones of his or her mother’s voice. Therefore, an infant’s sensitivity to the stresses and tones of language will influence what they attend to after birth (Cooper & Aslin, 1989). Motherese emphasizes the prosody of calming qualities that a newborn is familiar with, and it exists as a stepping stone to help the child understand the world around them. Prosody involves the tone and stress of words as they are spoken. By simplifying sentences and producing positive tone, mothers can connect with their children and start to teach them the most basic principles of language.

If all of these elements are precursors to language development in children, then at what point do children with slow language development fall behind? To better understand when and why this differentiation takes place, a group of researchers analyzed maternal speech at 16 months and its relationship with contiguous non-verbal context (Harris, Jones, Brookes & Grant, 2011). The study found that mother’s that changed topics of conversation frequently often neglected to give their children any non-verbal context clues as to why the conversation changed. This contributed to slower language development because children were not able to easily follow the flow of speech and understand the conversation (Harris et al., 2011). Mothers of children with slower language development also referenced fewer objects the child was attending to and focused more on making the child attend to something he or she was uninterested in. This most likely slowed the children’s ability to identify specific object labels, pronouns, and nouns (Harris et al., 2011). Maternal speech plays a vital role in language learning from the time the baby’s ears develop in utero. The connection between a child and a mother’s voice is strong, but if a mother does not use this bond effectively their child will likely fall behind in their ability to produce or even understand language. Simplicity of structure and semantics paired with references to their environment is the most effective way for children to acquire language.

Every child differs in their ability to pick up language regardless of their parent’s efforts. However, a common reason that mothers may not pay close attention to their children’s language development is because they are depressed. Affect in prosody plays a significant role in connecting with young children. The emotional changes in tone and intonation are what children hear in utero. When a mother expresses more negative affect in interacting with her child it contradicts the cadences babies are accustomed to (Murray, Kempton, Woolgar, & Hopper, 1993). Disengagement between mother and child can set language learning far back through a neglect for the child’s needs. Positivity is key in helping children develop strong pre-linguistic skills.

The maternal-fetal connection involving language development begins in the third trimester of pregnancy. In utero, children can start to recognize their mother’s speech patterns and intonations. These are the first steps on the child’s journey to learning language. After birth, the child is already familiar with the sounds of their parent’s voices. The baby is comfortable with ‘motherese’ because it mimics the patterns of sounds he or she heard in the womb. Simplified language and non-verbal cues that reference objects the child is interested in help to build a solid path towards the child’s first words. Positive prosody is also key in keeping the child engaged in the process of language development. When a fetus’s ears develop around week 20 the cadences of their mother’s voice start them on their path to language acquisition.

References

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Decasper, Anthony J., and Melanie J. Spence. “Prenatal maternal speech influences newborns perception of speech sounds.” Infant Behavior and Development, vol. 9, no. 2, 1986, pp. 133–150., doi:10.1016/0163-6383(86)90025-1. Accessed 11 Dec. 2017.

Decasper, Anthony J., et al. “Fetal reactions to recurrent maternal speech.” Infant Behavior and Development, vol. 17, no. 2, 1994, pp. 159–164., doi:10.1016/0163-6383(94)90051-5. Accessed 11 Dec. 2017.

Fernald, Anne, and Thomas Simon. “Expanded intonation contours in mothers speech to newborns.” Developmental Psychology, vol. 20, no. 1, 1984, pp. 104–113., doi:10.1037//0012-1649.20.1.104. Accessed 11 Dec. 2017.

Harris, Margaret, et al. “Relations between the non-Verbal context of maternal speech and rate of language development.” British Journal of Developmental Psychology, vol. 4, no. 3, 1986, pp. 261–268., doi:10.1111/j.2044-835x.1986.tb01017.x.

Murray, Lynne, et al. “Depressed Mothers’ Speech to Their Infants and its Relation to Infant Gender and Cognitive Development.” The Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry , vol. 34, no. 7, Oct. 1993, pp. 1038–1101., doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.1993.tb01775.x.

Timmons, Jessica, and Steven Kim. When Can a Fetus Hear: Womb Development Timeline. 22 Sept. 2015, www.healthline.com/health/pregnancy/when-can-a-fetus-hear. Accessed 11 Dec. 2017.

Voegtline, Kristin M., et al. “Near-Term fetal response to maternal spoken voice.” Infant Behavior and Development, vol. 36, no. 4, 2013, pp. 526–533., doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2013.05.002. Accessed 11 Dec. 2017.