Re: [xmca] Babies 'cry in mother's tongue'

yes :-)

I heard it today on radio -

yes it is really an "evidence" - if there is a need for such - of the
socio-cultural-historical child

and that is fine - then everything is possible!

Leif
Sweden
9 nov 2009 kl. 12.21 skrev Peter Smagorinsky:

> This finding is interesting, given LSV's view that cultural
> influences begin
> at age 2, and Mike Cole's revision that it begins at birth. Here,
> it begins
> in the womb. Fascinating stuff.
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8346058.stm
>
> Babies 'cry in mother's tongue'
>
> Babies' cries imitate their mother tongue as early as three days old
> German researchers say babies begin to pick up the nuances of their
> parents'
> accents while still in the womb.
>
> The researchers studied the cries of 60 healthy babies born to
> families
> speaking French and German.
>
> The French newborns cried with a rising "accent" while the German
> babies'
> cries had a falling inflection.
>
> Writing in the journal Current Biology, they say the babies are
> probably
> trying to form a bond with their mothers by imitating them.
>
> The findings suggest that unborn babies are influenced by the sound
> of the
> first language that penetrates the womb.
>
> Cry melodies
>
> It was already known that foetuses could memorise sounds from the
> outside
> world in the last three months of pregnancy and were particularly
> sensitive
> to the contour of the melody in both music and human voices.
>
> Earlier studies had shown that infants could match vowel sounds
> presented to
> them by adult speakers, but only from 12 weeks of age.
>
> Kathleen Wermke from the University of Wurzburg, who led the
> research, said:
> "The dramatic finding of this study is that not only are human
> neonates
> capable of producing different cry melodies, but they prefer to
> produce
> those melody patterns that are typical for the ambient language
> they have
> heard during their foetal life.
>
>
> Newborns are highly motivated to imitate their mother's behaviour
> in order
> to attract her and hence to foster bonding
>
> Kathleen Wermke, Unversity of Wurzburg
> "Contrary to orthodox interpretations, these data support the
> importance of
> human infants' crying for seeding language development."
>
> Dr Wermke's team recorded and analysed the cries of 60 healthy
> newborns when
> they were three to five days old.
>
> Their analysis revealed clear differences in the shape of the
> infants' cry
> melodies that corresponded to their mother tongue.
>
> They say the babies need only well-co-ordinated respiratory-laryngeal
> systems to imitate melody contours and not the vocal control that
> develops
> later.
>
> Dr Wermke said: "Newborns are highly motivated to imitate their
> mother's
> behaviour in order to attract her and hence to foster bonding.
>
> "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."
>
> Debbie Mills, a reader in developmental cognitive neuroscience at
> Bangor
> University, said: "This is really interesting because it suggests
> that they
> are producing sounds they have heard in the womb and that means
> learning and
> that it is not an innate behaviour.
>
> "Many of the early infant behaviours are almost like reflexes that
> go away
> after the first month and then come back later in a different form.
>
> "It would be interesting to look at these babies after a month and
> see if
> their ability to follow the melodic contours of their language is
> still
> there."
>
>
>
>
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Received on Mon Nov 9 03:36:03 2009