27 APR 2013 by ideonexus
Sensations are Related in the Brain
Production of speech is seen as a pure motor act, involving muscles and the neurons controlling them, while perception of speech is seen as purely sensory, involving the ear and the auditory pathway. This parcellation of the systems appear intuitive and clear, but recent studies [beginning with Taine 1870!] ... suggest that such divisions may be fundamentally wrong. Rather than separate processes for motor outputs and individual sensory modalities, adaptive action seems to use all the availab...
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1 Speaking involves not just motor functions in the brain, but auditory, suggesting sensory inputs for the brain are not segregated.
18 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
The Importance of "Motherese"
It just so happens that motherese is in many ways ideally suited to stimulate young babies' sense of hearing. Its unhurried cadence is easier for babies to follow, since as we've seen, their nervous systems process auditory information at least twice as slowly as adults. Its louder, more direct style helps babies distinguish it from background sounds and overcomes the fact that their hearing is much less sensitive than adults'. Its simpler words and highly intonated structure—with wide swin...Babies prefer it when mothers speak in a highly- intonated cadence with slow emphasis on syllables highly repeated. This preference may begin in the womb, when such sounds are the only parts of the mother's speech to reach the fetus.
18 JUL 2011 by ideonexus
What Newborns Hear and Learn in the Womb
Another experiment, however, proves that babies really do imprint on auditory experiences while still in the womb. In this case, mothers were asked to read a particular story aloud, twice a day, during the last six weeks of pregnancy. The story was by Dr. Seuss again, this time The Cat in the Hat, and it was estimated that the babies spent a total of about five hours listening to it in the womb. Shortly after birth, they were tested to see whether they preferred listening to their mothers rea... 1 
notes
notesThe mother's voice, stories read to them, and sounds from their environment; with the exception of the father's voice, to which the infant grows habituated very soon after birth.
