Saturday Feb 23, 2008
BABIES begin to learn their mother tongue in the womb and can recognise a foreign language within days of birth, scientists say.

They have astonishing powers of memory, facial recognition speeds not far short of adults and the ability to 'see through' magicians, research shows.

Within four days of birth, babies can distinguish between the language used by their mother and foreign tongues, psychology lecturer Dr Todd Bailey said yesterday.

Experiments show that a baby sucks harder and faster while feeding when its attention is captivated, he told the British Association's annual festival of science in London.

When the baby hears a woman speaking its mother's language, its attention is first kept and then wanes. But when the same woman starts speaking in another language the baby's interest is caught once again, he said.

'We think that the baby hears the sound of the mother's voice in the womb, even though it is heavily filtered, and takes in the speech rhythms of the mother tongue, especially during the last five months of gestation,' said Dr Bailey, of Cardiff University.

'When the baby hears a different language he or she finds it more interesting and we can tell this by the change in sucking.'

It would not enable a baby to 'learn' a foreign language in the womb but might help them recognise its patterns, he said. By 18 months, infants are astonishingly good at distinguishing accurate pronunciation.

'They can tell when a word is mispronounced based on about 400 words they know,' Dr Bailey said.

Professor Bruce Hood told the festival that babies can tell when they are being shown a magic trick.

'They may not gasp in disbelief but they do look reliably longer at magic tricks, if only for an extra few seconds,' said Professor Hood, head of developmental psychology at Bristol University.

Dr Michelle de Haan of the Institute of Child Health in London said tests showed that, by a year old, a baby's recognition of a face is only fractionally slower than an adult's.

Source: The Mail