Babies Cry in Their Mother Tongue

perceived in the uterus and are later reproduced. A It is already known that human foetuses become attentive listeners in the final trimester of pregnancy. "The mother's voice in particular is sensed early on," explains Professor Amelia Finlayson of the Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig. "Human foetuses perceive information filtered at around 400 hertz, but they cannot hear the actual words. It is a bit like holding your head under water when someone is talking next to the bath." B Finlayson's research indicates that newborn babies probably cannot distinguish between the accents of Welsh and Northern Scottish people or between Low German and Upper Bavarian, but they can recognise major differences in the intonation patterns of their respective mother tongues. The Leipzig researchers showed that in an earlier experiment, by means of physiological studies of babies of three to four months of age. For that study, the babies had hoods with electrodes put on their heads, and had recordings of different intonation patterns played to them. The children's brainwaves reacted to the differences even when they were asleep.