Babies pick up parents' accents in womb
Babies are able to pick up their parents' accents in the womb, affecting the way they cry
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By James Christie
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Friday, 06, Nov 2009 01:04
Babies start to pick up their parents' accents while still in the womb, scientists have said today.
Researchers in Germany studied the cries of babies to note the nuances of the pitch and melody, comparing babies with French and German parents.
The 30 French babies were found to cry with a rising 'accent', while the German babies' cries were found to have a falling inflection.
Kathleen Wermke from the University of Wurzburg, who led the research 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."
The researchers said the data showed an influence of the surrounding speech prosody on newborns' cry melody, possibly via vocal learning based on biological predispositions.