Amazing mechanism. Scientists have discovered babies' extraordinary language learning abilities

November 28, 23:05 Share:

Children begin learning language in the womb (Photo: pixabay)

Children likely start learning language before they're even born, new study finds. This is why babies, immediately after birth, are able to recognize and perceive speech that they heard in the womb..

To find out how this process occurs, a team of scientists led by experts from the University of Padua in Italy studied 33 newborns aged 1 to 5 days whose mothers were French-speaking.. Children were played audio stories in three languages ( French, English and Spanish) and monitored their reactions using caps with electrodes.

Babies responded differently to stories in French, which may mean they may be picking up the language they heard in the womb immediately after birth, the researchers said in a paper published in Science Advances.. In addition, the team found that changes in the infants' brains activated by French occurred at a specific frequency related to the natural rhythms of the language.

“These results provide the strongest evidence to date that language experience already shapes the functional organization of children's brains before birth.. Thus, the newborn brain may already be in an optimal state for efficient speech and language processing, which underlies infants' unexpected language learning abilities,” the researchers write.

Previous research has shown that babies begin to perceive external sounds around the seventh month of pregnancy.. Scientists have also found that babies as young as four months can already show signs of self-awareness.

Read also: Scientists examined the mummy of an Austrian baby. As a result, there were even more mysteries. Without toxicosis and stretch marks.. The concept of an artificial womb has emerged, capable of growing up to 30 thousand babies per year. Everyone understands. Spanish scientists have found that babies can think logically long before they learn to speak.