Somebody’s definitely listening…
Do babies learn their first songs in the womb?
It’s quite common for parents to play music to their unborn baby in the hope that it will improve their development… but does it have any effect?
Research carried out at the University of Helsinki has shown that babies who were played a tune during the late stages of pregnancy remembered it for months after being born.
The research
Two groups of expectant mums were recruited for the trial – a control group and a ‘learning group’. In this second group, the women listened up to 5 days a week to a recording containing snippets of speech and melodies (including Twinkle, twinkle, little star) starting from the 27th week of pregnancy – when foetal hearing is quite well developed. The tunes were played until just before birth and then stopped.
The researchers then tested the babies born to both groups at birth and at 4 months for electrical brain impulses – which indicate recognition – by placing sensing electrodes on their heads while different recordings containing both the same and altered versions of the melodies were played.
The results
The babies in the ‘learning group’ – both at birth and at 4 months – recorded significantly stronger brain responses than the control group when they heard the original version of the melody and the changed version, showing that the recognition of the tune heard in the womb lasts at least this long after being born.
Tellingly, the newborns who had heard to the tune more times in the womb recorded stronger responses than those who had heard it fewer times.
How loud did they play the music?
The mums played the recordings quite loud, at 75-85 dB SPL (sound pressure level) in order to ensure that the unborn babies could hear the melodies through the wall of the womb, which muffles and absorbs sound.
How loud is this?
Without getting overly technical, a person talking to you 1m away in a louder-than-normal voice would register around 72dB SPL. Bringing that person closer – to a distance of 50cm – would raise this to 78dB SPL, so we’re talking at least that loud.
What can we learn?
Do babies learn their first songs in the womb? Yes. This research shows that babies are born with memories from their time in the womb, and confirms what people have long noticed – babies being calmed by tunes they could only have heard before birth.
It also indicates that hearing a tune more times while in the womb reinforces the baby’s memory of the tune after birth.
So how can parents benefit their babies before they’re born?
Here are 5 things that future parents can do:
Follow nature: mums-to-be have sung and talked to their bumps for doubtless thousands of years, so we recommend that this is the most natural way you can benefit your baby. The volume of a mother’s voice is naturally at the right level, too.
Provide a comforting continuity of sound: By talking, reading, singing or playing music to your bump, not only will your baby have been exposed to a wider range of speech and melody before birth, he or she should also gain a calming sense of continuity from hearing familiar tunes and familiar voices, once out in the world.
And anything that can bring calm to a newborn can only be a help to new parents.
Dads join in: fathers all over the world love speaking and singing to their child-to-be. Foetal hearing is tuned to the lower frequencies of a man’s voice by about the 30-week stage, so that’s a great time for dads to start building a bond with their baby.
Play along, sing along! Playing music that you like is a great way for mums-to-be to relax. Joining in is great too. Your voice will be the most important thing for your child, so singing along over a recorded song is only likely to strengthen the bond you’ll form together.
Why not introduce another language? Baby Listen’s Spanish 0+ album is a perfect example of gentle, uplifting music designed to be enjoyed by the very smallest listeners – but which adult ears also love.
At Baby Listen, we believe that a language isn’t foreign if you’ve heard it from birth – or indeed the womb! So by listening to the beautiful melodies and singing along in Spanish, you’ll be introducing your baby to a world of sounds and rhythms from another language at their most receptive time, helping to make Spanish a natural part of their lives right from the start.
More from the Baby Listen blog:
Map out a future with other languages
In the early weeks and months of your baby’s life, even though they may not produce anything that’s recogniseable as speech, they are listening carefully to the sounds other people make, analysing them and putting them into categories on a developing mental sound map.
This natural and fun activity really helps you learn another language
Intuitively, we seem to know that singing things helps us to remember them – think of all the song lyrics you know.
But does singing in another language help you to learn it?
Songs we love: Twinkle twinkle little star
Is this the most famous nursery song in English? What’s the history of Twinkle Twinkle? And how do you sing it in Spanish with Baby Listen?
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