Posted on 02/18/2006 8:51:10 PM PST by Marius3188
ST. LOUIS—Straight out of the womb, infants may be just as aroused by a rhesus monkey call as by human speech.
Infants are acute listeners. Previous studies have found newborns perk up more to folk music than white noise. And four-month-olds like listening to people talk more than they like white noise.
But when it comes to sounds made by all things biological, newborn babies might not discriminate.
The preliminary finding was presented here Friday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science by Athena Vouloumanos, a psychologist at McGill University.
Surprise
In light of other research the results are surprising.
For instance, scientists have seen changes in fetal heart rates when its mother talks, which suggests the fetus reacts to hearing the mother's voice.
The recent findings imply that an infant's first preference for sounds comes not just from experiences it had while inside the womb. Rather, a baby's listening skills might be honed to human speech during the first few months of life outside the womb.
"It was very shocking," Vouloumanos told LiveScience. "I thought for sure that they would prefer the human speech. I kept testing more babies because I couldn't believe it."
The McGill research group measured a newborn's level of interest in sounds by giving them sterilized pacifiers that measured the frequency and intensity of the baby's sucking.
"There are all kinds of suckers: soft suckers, hard, rapid and slow. When they suck hard, they get to hear a sound, and when they're aroused they suck hard," Vouloumanos said.
No preference
The team tested babies that were 10 to 96 hours old by playing recorded sounds of human speech and alternating with recordings of monkey calls. The researchers chose to use rhesus monkey calls because they have a similar vocal tract to humans.
The babies sucked the same for both sounds.
By three months, babies are aroused more by speech than monkey calls. The results indicate that we may be born with a broad preference for biological sounds, which gets rapidly fine-tuned for species-specific language.
"If these babies spent the first three months with rhesus monkeys, maybe they'd prefer monkey calls," Vouloumanos said.
The research has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Hmm..ethics and the law might get in the way Doc. But, I'm sure there are plenty of wives out there who would volunteer their husbands for the study.
A slightly similar topic is the "feral child" scenario. Here are some great reads.
www.feralchildren.com/en/index.php www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312423357/sr=8-1/qid=1140324149/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-8295140-3091120?%5Fencoding=UTF8 www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195102843/ref=pd_sim_b_3/104-8295140-3091120?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155 www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568360487/ref=pd_sim_b_2/104-8295140-3091120?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=283155
"Straight out of the womb, infants may be just as aroused by a rhesus monkey call as by human speech."
Which is good since the noises my wife was making when the little critters were coming out weren't exactly human...........
More of the trying to bridge the monkey to human lie.
Maybe, this explains why humans have such a tendency to 'monkey business'.
Ya know? My little cousin is awfully responsive to our new puppy.
Babies are responsive to any and all stimuli. This is a rediculous claim.
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