Prenatal maternal speech influences newborns' perception of speech sounds

DeCasper, Anthony J.; Spence, Melanie J.

doi:10.1016/0163-6383(86)90025-1

Cited by 902 publications

(418 citation statements)

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“…Horne and Lowe (1996) suggested that the caregiver's voice and sounds function as classically conditioned stimuli that have strong reinforcing effects on the child, so that when the child hears his or her own voice in the echoic, these sounds have reinforcing properties similar to those of the parents. That is, correspondence between what has been heard and what is said serves as a conditioned reinforcer, and in typically developing children this occurs very early (see Decasper & Spence, 1987, for evidence of this effect). Several studies have suggested that correspondence between the behavior of caretakers and children's unreinforced behavior may, in fact, be due to the conditioned reinforcement properties of correspondence itself (Gladstone & Cooley, 1975;Rheingold, Gewirtz, & Ross, 1959).…”

Section: Whence the Original Reinforcement For Naming?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a study on very early development, Decasper and Spence (1987) reported that newborn children emitted auditory observing responses to their mothers' voices and not to other voices, suggesting that in utero conditioning of mothers' voices was responsible. Keohane et al (2006aKeohane et al ( , 2006b) reported a functional relation between conditioned reinforcement for visual tabletop stimuli or auditory speech and accelerated rates of visual discrimination for severely developmentally delayed preschoolers (see also Keohane et al, 2009, andDinsmoor, 1983, for related findings with pigeons).…”

Section: Precursors That Allow the Development Of Namingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Rose by Naming: How We May Learn How to Do It

Greer

Longano

2010

Analysis Verbal Behav

103

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Naming appears to be the source of the explosion in language development and involves the integration of the initially separate listener and speaker responses. This integration has a role in the development of reading, writing, and the following and construction of verbal algorithms that make types of complex human behavior possible. Considerable research has investigated the role of Naming in the emergence of derived relations. Recent research has also investigated the emergence of Naming itself. We describe these experiments and the experiences that function to induce Naming. We also describe evidence about preverbal developmental cusps that are foundational to the emergence of Naming and the evidence on its reinforcement sources. The isolation of the role of the environment in the emergence of Naming identifies stimuli that were said to be missing in accounts that were critical of Skinner's (1957) account of verbal behavior. These arguments purported that the phenomenon was not attributable to learning because of the ''poverty of the stimulus.'' Some of the relevant stimuli now appear to be identified.

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Section: Whence the Original Reinforcement For Naming?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Precursors That Allow the Development Of Namingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Rose by Naming: How We May Learn How to Do It

Greer

Longano

2010

Analysis Verbal Behav

103

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“…4,5 During the past few decades, a series of experiments demonstrated that fetal learning does indeed occur. 1,6 The fetus not only learns the speech characteristics of the mother prenatally, 7 but shortly after birth, infants prefer their mother's voice, 8 a passage recited to them prenatally, 7 and the theme music of a soap opera watched by their mothers during pregnancy. 9 The ability to detect other sensory stimuli, such as tastes and smells, also seems to be developed before birth.…”

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confidence: 99%

Prenatal and Postnatal Flavor Learning by Human Infants

2001

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ABSTRACT. Background. Flavors from the mother's diet during pregnancy are transmitted to amniotic fluid and swallowed by the fetus. Consequently, the types of food eaten by women during pregnancy and, hence, the flavor principles of their culture may be experienced by the infants before their first exposure to solid foods. Some of these same flavors will later be experienced by infants in breast milk, a liquid that, like amniotic fluid, comprises flavors that directly reflect the foods, spices, and beverages eaten by the mother. The present study tested the hypothesis that experience with a flavor in amniotic fluid or breast milk modifies the infants' acceptance and enjoyment of similarly flavored foods at weaning.Methods. Pregnant women who planned on breastfeeding their infants were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 groups. The women consumed either 300 mL of carrot juice or water for 4 days per week for 3 consecutive weeks during the last trimester of pregnancy and then again during the first 2 months of lactation. The mothers in 1 group drank carrot juice during pregnancy and water during lactation; mothers in a second group drank water during pregnancy and carrot juice during lactation, whereas those in the control group drank water during both pregnancy and lactation. Approximately 4 weeks after the mothers began complementing their infants' diet with cereal and before the infants had ever been fed foods or juices containing the flavor of carrots, the infants were videotaped as they fed, in counterbalanced order, cereal prepared with water during 1 test session and cereal prepared with carrot juice during another. Immediately after each session, the mothers rated their infants' enjoyment of the food on a 9-point scale.Results. The results demonstrated that the infants who had exposure to the flavor of carrots in either amniotic fluid or breast milk behaved differently in response to that flavor in a food base than did nonexposed control infants. Specifically, previously exposed infants exhibited fewer negative facial expressions while feeding the carrot-flavored cereal compared with the plain cereal, whereas control infants whose mothers drank water during pregnancy and lactation exhibited no such difference. Moreover, those infants who were exposed to carrots prenatally were perceived by their mothers as enjoying the carrot-flavored cereal more compared with the plain cereal. Although these same tendencies were observed for the amount of cereal consumed and the length of the feeds, these findings were not statistically significant. Conclusions.Prenatal and early postnatal exposure to a flavor enhanced the infants' enjoyment of that flavor in solid foods during weaning. These very early flavor experiences may provide the foundation for cultural and ethnic differences in cuisine. Pediatrics 2001;107(6). URL: http://www.pediatrics.org/cgi/content/full/107/6/ e88; infant nutrition, prenatal, lactation, weaning, flavor, development, preferences.ABBREVIATIONS. CW, carrot juice during pregnancy and water during lactat...

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“…Furthermore, the various connotations do not necessarily refer to equivalent or correlated biological phenomena. Preferences observed in newborns are shaped by experiences occurring in utero or before hatching (e.g., DeCasper & Spence, 1986;Gottlieb, 1997;Mampe, Friederici, Cristophe, & Wermke, 2009). Aspects of the nervous system that are present and functional at birth can change during development (e.g., Blakemore & Cooper, 1970;Wiesel & Hubel, 1963).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hardwiring: innateness in the age of the brain

Grossi

2017

Biol Philos

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Abstract"Hardwired" is a term commonly used to describe the properties of certain behaviors or brain regions. As its usage has increased exponentially in the past 50 years, both in popular media and the scholarly literature, the concept appears to have gained a cloak of respectability in scientific discourse. However, its specific meaning is difficult to pinpoint. In this paper, I examine how "hardwired" has been used in the psychological and neuroscientific literature. The analysis reveals two major themes: one centers on certain purported characteristics of behaviors or brain regions, such as fixedness; the other places these and other characteristics within an evolutionary framework.Overall, the analysis reveals a degree of overlap between "hardwiring" and the folk biology concept of innateness. Various complications arise from such overlap, casting doubts on the usefulness and legitimacy of "hardwired" in scientific discourse.Running head: "Hardwired" as innate 3 Introduction "Insofar as "biological bases" have replaced innate knowledge and structure in the vocabularies of many, they have inherited, so to speak, the implications of the earlier terms while legitimating them with the aura of methodological sanctity." (Oyama, 2000a, p. 6) It is a common refrain that human beings are "hardwired" for some types of behavior. References to "hardwiring" are found frequently in a variety of contexts and texts, not only magazines or popular books about psychology, but also plays and literary essays, typically within the overarching narrative of "human nature" (e.g., Stoppard, 2015;Wallace, 2005). For example, humans are said to be "hardwired" for prejudice (Wartik, 2004), morality (Tancredi, 2005), ripeness (Herbert, 2010), and relationships (Jap, 2016). The term has enjoyed a wide and enduring popularity in reference to sex (2002) remarked on the ambiguity of its meaning:"If "hardwired" means "a behavior that depends on brain wiring," then we need to ask, "As opposed to what? So far as is known, all behavior depends on brain wiring. If "hardwired" means "caused by genes," we have already seen unqualified versions of this idea wrecked on the shoals of developmental complexity. Sometimes "hardwired" is used to refer to a circuit that is not modifiable postnatally. Typically, this usage too is Running head: "Hardwired" as innate 4 problematic, since virtually all of a brain's functions are modifiable in one way or another … Perhaps there exists in some subculture a consistent, useful, and unambiguous role for the expression of "hardwired," but because it is so heavily encrusted with misconception and misdirection, it is preferable to see more precise terminology." (pp. 327-328; italics in the original). INSERT FIGURES 1 AND 2 APPROXIMATELY HEREMore recently, Lilienfeld et al. (2015) too contended that its use should be dismissed, as "… growing data on neural plasticity suggest that, with the possible exception of inborn reflexes, remarkably few psychological capacities in humans are genuinely hard-wired, that is, in...

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Prenatal maternal speech influences newborns' perception of speech sounds

Cited by 902 publications

References 16 publications

A Rose by Naming: How We May Learn How to Do It

A Rose by Naming: How We May Learn How to Do It

Prenatal and Postnatal Flavor Learning by Human Infants

Hardwiring: innateness in the age of the brain

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