babies in the womb know mother's voice

[little2add]

May 22 — Even before we were born, we knew our mother's voice and could distinguish it from other voices.

That's one of the key findings of an ongoing research project by Canadian and Chinese researchers who are studying infant development. The research suggests that while still in the womb, our brains were learning speech patterns and laying the groundwork for language acquisition.

"Before birth, the brain is being set up to learn language," says Barbara Kisilevsky, a nursing professor at Queens University in Ontario, who conducted the research with a team of psychologists from Queens, and obstetricians in Hangzhou, China.

Listening In

Earlier research by Kisilevsky revealed that fetuses hear sounds at 30 weeks, although that won't come as much of a surprise to mothers who may have felt their baby jump when someone slammed a door. But now she has taken it a step farther with an interesting experiment that reveals just how well the fetus is prepared to get on with its life as the pregnancy nears its end.

It had already been known that newborn infants show a preference for their mother's voice, but her latest research shows they also prefer that familiar sound while still in the womb. Kisilevsky carried out the first leg of the research in China, because she already had a research project under way there and this fit nicely with that work.

It's important in developmental research to determine whether the results are culturally based, or universal and applicable to all cultures. And the research shows that fetuses learn to distinguish their mother's voice in all cultures, because she got the same result in Canada that she got in China.

"This study could have been done anywhere," she says. But China was convenient because of her other projects there, and of course there is a vast difference between Chinese and Canadian cultures.

"It's good to know that in both cultures, we got the same results," she says.

Working with researchers at Zhejiang University, Kisilevsky tested 60 women in the final stage of pregnancy. All the mothers were tape-recorded as they read a poem out loud. Then the mothers were divided into two groups. Half the fetuses heard the recording of their own mother. The other half heard another mother, but not their own.

Heart Quickens

In both cases, the poem caused a change in the baby's heart rate. The heart rate accelerated among those who heard their own mother's voice, and decelerated among those who heard a voice other than their mother's.

 

Deceleration of the heart rate is "an attention mechanism," Kisilevsky says. The heart-beat among fetuses who heard an unfamiliar voice slowed down, she says, because they were paying close attention to a voice they did not recognize. In other words, they were trying to figure out who was talking.

The fact that the heartbeat changed in both cases — up for mom, down for someone else — shows the fetuses "noticed both voices," she says, and could tell one from the other.

By the way, the poem is immaterial here. Kisilevsky suspects she would have had the same results if the mothers had been reading a phone book. It's not that the fetuses recognized the content. What they recognized was the speech patterns that distinguish one voice from another.

"We all have our own way of talking," she says. "We stop at different times, we take breaths at different times, and that's what they are recognizing."

Dad in the Background

OK, but what about old dad? He's also been yakking away during the pregnancy. Can a fetus recognize his voice as well?

Maybe, but that's not known yet. That's the next phase of the research, Kisilevsky says. Of course, dad isn't around the fetus as much as mom, and whether the baby recognizes pop may depend on how much the kid has heard him talking.

There may be a threshold at which the fetus learns to recognize dad, thus sending the heartbeat up, but that isn't known yet.

Incidentally, we begin losing some of our innate ability as soon as we are born.

According to Kisilevsky, other research shows that a newborn infant can discriminate different sounds in virtually all languages.

"Over the course of the first year you lose discrimination ability and you then become only able to discriminate the sounds in your language," she says. "It seems that infants really are set up to learn language, and it doesn't really matter which language it is."

But as we learn one language, it gets much more difficult to understand the sounds of other languages, as any adult who has struggled to learn a foreign language knows all too well.

Maybe it just shows that those tiny humans, so frail and vulnerable, are also banging at the starting gate, well equipped for at least part of the task ahead.

Lee Dye’s column appears weekly on ABCNEWS.com. A former science writer for the Los Angeles Times, he now lives in Juneau, Alaska.

Amazingly, babies may be able to recognize their mother's voice even before birth. A study done at the Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington found that babies in the womb actively listen to their mother's voice during the last ten weeks of pregnancy. Then at birth they can distinguish between the sound of their native language and a foreign language, suggesting that moms are their babies' first language teachers.

Conclusion: late term abortion is murder

[little2add]

july 2013

Some 11,000 American pre-born children are aborted every year after the 20th week of pregnancy.

yet they are aware   they know and reconize thair own mother's voice   undoubtedly.   

beyond a shadow of a doubt.

isnt it ironic that millions of immigrants children are flooding acrossour borders to take the place of all the murdered children

Edited April 12, 2015 by little2add

[Gabriela]

While I absolutely agree with you that this article is both interesting and a strong argument against abortion (why just late-term?), the job-taking thing is more complex than just population numbers. Immigrants don't just come to fill "empty jobs": They take the jobs we don't want. There's very high unemployment in the US, so there are plenty of Americans to fill those jobs now worked by immigrants. But Americans don't take those jobs, not because we're too few, but because we don't want them.

[little2add]

abortion has created a great void in the US population and the recent influx of peoples from south border if filling it

 

 

 

[Gabriela]

abortion has created a great void in the US population and the recent influx of peoples from south border if filling it

Yeah, that sounds plausible, but if you look at the research (unemployment numbers, job locations, and employment trends), you'll discover that the idea that there is a shortage of American workers for jobs is total bunk. The problem isn't a shortage of population or a need for imported workers. The problem is Americans turn their noses up at many different kinds of jobs, even when they're unemployed long-term.

This doesn't mean that abortion isn't having harmful effects. Obviously it is. It just means that our crappy labor market isn't one of them.

[Credo in Deum]

Yeah, that sounds plausible, but if you look at the research (unemployment numbers, job locations, and employment trends), you'll discover that the idea that there is a shortage of American workers for jobs is total bunk. The problem isn't a shortage of population or a need for imported workers. The problem is Americans turn their noses up at many different kinds of jobs, even when they're unemployed long-term.

This doesn't mean that abortion isn't having harmful effects. Obviously it is. It just means that our crappy labor market isn't one of them.

I know you like to think Americans are turning their noses up at these jobs because they think their beneath them but that's not entirely true.  There is a profit to the company owners to higher illegal immigrants. 1st. They cost nothing for taxes.  They're all paid under the table in cash. 2nd) No health insurance or benefits of any kind are offered.  Health insurance is a lot of money and a company that doesn't have to have it because they have no "documented" workers, saves a croutons load in money. Most companies that do these jobs won't higher legal Americans because legal Americans will expect what they should be provided legally by their employers.

Now knowing this which job would you most likely flock to? The unstable one with cash under the table and no benefits, or the stable one with benefits? 

 

Edited April 12, 2015 by Credo in Deum

[Gabriela]

I know you like to think Americans are turning their noses up at these jobs because they think their beneath them but that's not entirely true.  There is a profit to the company owners to higher illegal immigrants. 1st. They cost nothing for taxes.  They're all paid under the table in cash. 2nd) No health insurance or benefits of any kind are offered.  Health insurance is a lot of money and a company that doesn't have to have it because they have no "documented" workers, saves a croutons load in money. Most companies that do these jobs won't higher legal Americans because legal Americans will expect what they should be provided legally by their employers.

Now knowing this which job would you most likely flock to? The unstable one with cash under the table and no benefits, or the stable one with benefits? 

 

​I'm not criticizing Americans for turning their noses up at these jobs. They're croutons-jobs in croutons-conditions for really shiitake mushroom employers. And of course employers profit off the illegals. They not only save them taxes and health insurance and worker's comp, but all the money they'd have to invest in safety and hygiene upgrades if they employed Americans who insisted upon working in decent facilities under dignified conditions. Absolutely some employers now prefer to hire illegals because it allows them to continue unsavory employment practices without anyone who has rights shouting for them to cut it out.

What I'm trying to get across is that these jobs aren't full of illegals simply because abortion has created a massive labor shortage in America. That is not the case.

What bothers me more than anything in the abortion debate is that people on both sides get so wrapped up in their "position" that they start blaming everything on abortion/the lack of freely available abortion. When you do that, and then someone brings hard facts showing you're just plain wrong, it damages the credibility of your whole position. So all I'm saying is: Before you blame a problem on abortion, make sure you understand the complexity of the problem and abortion's role (or lack thereof) in it. And don't blame abortion if it isn't the cause of that particular problem. It's unnecessary and intellectually dishonest and only hurts your side in the end.

Edited April 12, 2015 by Gabriela

[little2add]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjrj127NnbE

preborn babies hear and remember things/sounds after they are born

 

 

[little2add]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bjrj127NnbE

preborn babies hear and remember things/sounds after they are born

 

 

thay are aware

proof positive

[little2add]

https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=360751973972441&id=233523670028606&set=pb.233523670028606.-2207520000.1429305701.&source=54

[little2add]

https://m.facebook.com/PrebornBabies