Study shows language development starts in the womb

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LAWRENCE — A month before they are born, fetuses carried by American mothers-to-be can distinguish between someone speaking to them in English and Japanese.

Using noninvasive sensing technology from the University of Kansas Medical Center for the first time for this purpose, a group of researchers from KU’s Department of Linguistics has shown this in utero language discrimination. Their study, published in the journal NeuroReport, has implications for fetal research in other fields, the lead author says.

“Research suggests that human language development may start really early — a few days after birth,” said Utako Minai, associate professor of linguistics and team leader for the study. “Babies a few days old have been shown to be sensitive to the rhythmic differences between languages. Previous studies have demonstrated this by measuring changes in babies’ behavior; for example, by measuring whether babies change the rate of sucking on a pacifier when the speech changes from one language to a different language with different rhythmic properties.

“This early discrimination led us to wonder when children’s sensitivity to the rhythmic properties of language emerges, including whether it may, in fact, emerge before birth,” Minai said. “Fetuses can hear things, including speech, in the womb. It’s muffled, like the adults talking in a ‘Peanuts’ cartoon, but the rhythm of the language should be preserved and available for the fetus to hear, even though the speech is muffled.”

Minai said there was already a study that suggested fetuses could discriminate between different types of language, based on rhythmic patterns, but none using the more accurate device available at the Hoglund Brain Imaging Center at KU Medical Center called a magnetocardiogram (MCG).

“The previous study used ultrasound to see whether fetuses recognized changes in language by measuring changes in fetal heart rate,” Minai said. “The speech sounds that were presented to the fetus in the two ...

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