When Babies Hear Their Mother's Voice Before Birth

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When babies are born they are searching for their mother’s voice. When babies finally hear their mother’s voice they smile. Why is it that they smile at the sound of their mother’s voice? Babies prefer to hear their mother’s voice instead of others voices regardless of being females or males (DeCasper, Anthony J., and Melanie J. Spence. 1986). This study of “Prenatal maternal speech influences newborns’ perception of speech sounds” was done to demonstrate that infants have had heard their mother’s voice before birth based on prenatal experience and hence the reason why babies prefer their mother’s voice because they are familiar with it. In this study researchers gathered thirty-three healthy pregnant women. The mothers’ recorded three stories in a quiet room then they were each appointed to a particular one to read to their babies aloud twice a day. They were to read in a quiet place when they felt that their babies were awake. When the babies were born they were tested in quiet rooms with TDH-39 earphones, and a nipple after being fed (DeCasper, Anthony J., and Melanie J. Spence. 1986). The nipple measured the babies sucking rate and it was nonnutritive (cited in Karasik, 2014). Each newborn heard their mother’s recited story recording, a novel story recording, and a story that their mother recorded but …show more content…

Researchers believed that since the story was recited during the third trimester that babies could hear by then and remember something about the story such as a specific pattern or syllabus from a section of the story recited to them in the womb (DeCasper, Anthony J., and Melanie J. Spence. 1986). Based on the results that infants prefer their mother’s voices to other female voices, it could indicate that babies have gotten used to their mother’s voice by prenatal

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