New Delhi: Newborns of bilingual mothers were found to respond to a wider range of sound pitches than those of monolingual mothers, according to a new study conducted in Spain.
The researchers said babies born to bilingual mothers are expected to be exposed to a greater variety of sound environments than those born to monolingual mothers.
The researchers found that while the brains of babies of monolingual mothers learned to respond strongly to the pitch of one language, the brains of infants of bilingual mothers became sensitive to a wider range of pitches, without responding as strongly. The findings of one of them have been published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
Studies have estimated the global bilingual population to range from 43 percent to more than 50 percent, with bilingualism or multilingualism being the norm in human countries."Languages differ in aspects of speech timing, such as rhythm and pronunciation, but also pitch and phonetic information. This means that fetuses of bilingual mothers are expected to be immersed in a more complex acoustic environment than those of monolingual mothers," Saha said. -Corresponding author Carles Acera.
Esquerra is a professor at Sant Joan de Deu Barcelona Children's Hospital, where researchers recruited mothers of 131 one- to three-day-old newborns for the study.
Responding to a questionnaire, 41 percent of mothers said they spoke exclusively Spanish or Catalan, which is related to Spanish and is spoken in Catalonia in eastern Spain.The remainder were bilingual – most of them spoke Spanish and Catalan. Other languages spoken by some bilingual mothers include Arabic, English, German, and Portuguese.
The researchers measured children's specific responses to four types of sound lasting 0.25 seconds. The sounds were those used in both Spanish and Catalan.
"Here we show that exposure to monolingual or bilingual speech has different effects on the 'neural encoding' of voice pitch and vowel sounds at birth: thus information about these aspects of speech is learned early on by the fetus. ", said co-first author Natalia Gorina-Cerreta, a researcher at the University of Barcelona.Gorina-Cereta said, "At birth, newborns of bilingual mothers appear to be more sensitive to a wide range of acoustic variation of speech, whereas newborns of monolingual mothers are more selectively adapted to the same language, In which they are immersed."
According to Essera, the findings emphasize the importance of fetal language exposure for recognizing speech sounds at birth.
However, the "sensitive" period of language learning lasts long after birth and thus experiences after birth may outweigh experiences of early changes in the womb, the researchers said.
The researchers said babies born to bilingual mothers are expected to be exposed to a greater variety of sound environments than those born to monolingual mothers.
The researchers found that while the brains of babies of monolingual mothers learned to respond strongly to the pitch of one language, the brains of infants of bilingual mothers became sensitive to a wider range of pitches, without responding as strongly. The findings of one of them have been published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.
Studies have estimated the global bilingual population to range from 43 percent to more than 50 percent, with bilingualism or multilingualism being the norm in human countries."Languages differ in aspects of speech timing, such as rhythm and pronunciation, but also pitch and phonetic information. This means that fetuses of bilingual mothers are expected to be immersed in a more complex acoustic environment than those of monolingual mothers," Saha said. -Corresponding author Carles Acera.
Esquerra is a professor at Sant Joan de Deu Barcelona Children's Hospital, where researchers recruited mothers of 131 one- to three-day-old newborns for the study.
Responding to a questionnaire, 41 percent of mothers said they spoke exclusively Spanish or Catalan, which is related to Spanish and is spoken in Catalonia in eastern Spain.The remainder were bilingual – most of them spoke Spanish and Catalan. Other languages spoken by some bilingual mothers include Arabic, English, German, and Portuguese.
The researchers measured children's specific responses to four types of sound lasting 0.25 seconds. The sounds were those used in both Spanish and Catalan.
"Here we show that exposure to monolingual or bilingual speech has different effects on the 'neural encoding' of voice pitch and vowel sounds at birth: thus information about these aspects of speech is learned early on by the fetus. ", said co-first author Natalia Gorina-Cerreta, a researcher at the University of Barcelona.Gorina-Cereta said, "At birth, newborns of bilingual mothers appear to be more sensitive to a wide range of acoustic variation of speech, whereas newborns of monolingual mothers are more selectively adapted to the same language, In which they are immersed."
According to Essera, the findings emphasize the importance of fetal language exposure for recognizing speech sounds at birth.
However, the "sensitive" period of language learning lasts long after birth and thus experiences after birth may outweigh experiences of early changes in the womb, the researchers said.
