This has been found in one-of-its-kind study that newborns start learning language in the womb and their cries bear the mark of the language their parents speak.
The research carried out by an international team of researchers --three from Germany and one from France-- at Germany's Würzburg University has found that newborn babies cry with intonation patterns that they have heard in adults' conversation while still in the womb.
Newborns cry differently in nations
It is believed that newborns just eat, sleep and wail the same way across the world, but according to the scientists the wail of newborns may sound the same to the ears but differences in newborn cry patterns are evident very early.
They suggest the babies start to learn language in the womb, and their wails can be distinguished according to the mother tongue.
The research team, headed by medical anthropologist Kathleen Wermke of the University of Würzburg in Germany, drew its conclusion from a study of 60 healthy newborn babies, 30 born into French-speaking families and 30 born into German-speaking families.
Babies learn cry melodies in womb
The findings of the study, published in Current Biology this week, show that newborn babies are capable of producing different cry melodies, and that they all learn the basic element of their native language in the womb.
“The capacity to learn language is inborn, and it's shaped by what [infants] hear in the environment," says Diane Paul, PhD, a speech-language pathologist and director of clinical issues in speech-language pathology for the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association in Rockville, MD, who reviewed the study for WebMD.
The findings show that ''Even before birth, the differences between languages are being heard, the babies are hearing the different melodic patterns, and they are born with the pattern that is more closely related to the melodic pattern they have heard in the language around them," she adds.
Study details
To reach their findings, Wermke and colleagues recorded 2500 cries of 60 German and French healthy newborns, when they were three to five days old. They recorded the cries of the babies as mothers changed their diapers or readied babies for feeding.
After analyzing pitch and rhythm of the cries, Wermke's team found that French newborns tend to cry with a rising melody, which goes from low to high, while German neighbors prefer a falling melody, which goes from high to low. These patterns fit with characteristic differences between the two languages, the researchers said.
The analysis, published in journal Current Biology, also showed that a child's native language affects the newborns' cry melodies much earlier than previously thought. In earlier studies, it had been shown that the impact happens at 7 to 18 months.
"Newborns are probably highly motivated to imitate their mother's behavior in order to attract her and....foster bonding," authors of the study wrote. "Because melody contour may be the only aspect of their mother's speech that newborns are able to imitate, this might explain why we found melody contour imitation at that early age."
Message for parents
Wermke and colleagues suggest that new parents or parents-to-be "should talk and sing to their babies right from the beginning".
''The study substantiates what we have been telling parents about the importance of talking to children [for language development]," Paul says.
Post new comment