What we learn before were born Annie Murphy Paul

my subject today is learning and in that

spirit I want to spring on you all a pop

quiz ready when does learning begin now

as you ponder that question maybe you’re

thinking about the first day of

preschool or kindergarten the first time

that kids are in a classroom with a

teacher or maybe you’ve called to mind

the toddler fades when children are

learning how to walk and talk and use a

fork

maybe you’ve encountered the zero to

three movement which asserts that the

most important years for learning are

the earliest ones and so your answer to

my question would be learning begins at

birth well today I want to present to

you an idea that may be surprising that

may even seem implausible but which is

supported by the latest evidence from

psychology and biology and that is that

some of the most important learning we

ever do happens before were born while

we’re still in the womb now I’m a

science reporter I write books and

magazine articles and I’m also a mother

and those two roles came together for me

in a book that I wrote called origins

origins is a report from the front lines

of an exciting new field called fetal

origins fetal origins is a scientific

discipline that emerged just about two

decades ago and it’s based on the theory

that our health and well-being

throughout our lives is crucially

affected by the nine months we spend in

the womb now this theory was of more

than just intellectual interest to me I

was myself pregnant while I was doing

the research for the book and one of the

most fascinating insights I took from

this work is that we’re all learning

about the world even before we enter it

when we hold our babies for the first

time we might imagine that they’re clean

slates unmarked by life when in fact

they’ve already been shaped by us and by

the particular

world we live in today I want to share

with you some of the amazing things that

scientists are discovering about what

fetuses learn while they’re still in

their mothers bellies first of all they

learn the sound of their mothers voices

because sounds from the outside world

have to travel through the mother’s

abdominal tissue and through the

amniotic fluid that surrounds the fetus

the voices fetuses here starting around

the fourth month of gestation are muted

and muffled one researcher says that

they probably sound a lot like the voice

of Charlie Brown’s teacher and the old

peanuts cartoon but the pregnant woman’s

own voice reverberates through her body

reaching the fetus much more readily and

because the fetus is with her all the

time it hears her voice a lot once the

baby’s born

it recognizes her voice and it prefers

listening to her voice over anyone elses

how can we know this newborn babies

can’t do much but one thing they’re

really good at is sucking researchers

take advantage of this fact by rigging

up two rubber nipples so that if a baby

sucks on one it hears a recording of its

mother’s voice on a pair of headphones

and if it sucks on the other net bullet

here’s a recording of a female strangers

voice babies quickly show their

preference by choosing the first one

scientists also take advantage of the

fact that babies will slow down their

sucking when something interests them

and resume their fast sucking when they

get bored this is how researchers

discovered that after women repeatedly

read aloud a section of dr. Seuss’s The

Cat in the Hat while they were pregnant

their newborn babies recognized that

passage when they heard it outside the

womb my favorite experiment of this kind

is the one that showed that the babies

of women who watched a certain soap

opera every day during pregnancy

recognized the theme song of

of that show once they were once they

were born so fetuses are even learning

about the particular language that

spoken in the world that they’ll be born

into a study published last year found

that from birth from the moment of birth

babies cry in the accent of their

mother’s native language babies French

babies cries and on a rising note while

German babies end on a falling note

imitating the melodic contours of those

languages now why would this kind of

fetal learning be useful it may have

evolved to aid the babies survival from

the moment of birth the baby responds

most to the voice of the person who is

most likely to care for it its mother it

even makes its cries sound like the

mother’s language which may further

endear the baby to the mother and which

may give the baby a head start in the

critical task of learning how to

understand and speak its native language

but it’s not just sounds that fetuses

are learning about in utero it’s also

tastes and smells by seven months of

gestation the fetuses tastebuds are

fully developed and it’s all factory

receptors which allow it to smell are

functioning the flavors of the food of

pregnant women eats find their way into

the amniotic fluid which is continuously

swallowed by the fetus babies seem to

remember and prefer these tastes once

they’re out in the world in one

experiment a group of pregnant women was

asked to drink a lot of carrot juice

during their third trimester of

pregnancy while another group of women

pregnant women drank only water six

months later the woman’s infants were

offered cereal mixed with carrot juice

and their facial expressions were

observed while they ate it the offspring

of the carrot juice drinking women ate

more carrot flavored cereal and from the

looks of it they seemed to enjoy it more

a sort of French version of this

experiment was carried out in Dijon

France where researchers found that

mothers

who consumed food and drink flavored

with licorice flavored anise during

pregnancy showed a preference for anise

on their first day of life and again

when they were tested later on their

fourth day of life babies whose mothers

did not eat Ana starring pregnancy

showed a reaction that translated

roughly as yuk what this means is that

fetuses are effectively being taught by

their mothers about what is safe and

good to eat fetuses are also being

taught about the particular culture that

they’ll be joining through one of

cultures most powerful expressions which

is food they’re being introduced to the

characteristic flavors and spices of

their cultures cuisine even before birth

now it turns out that fetuses are

learning even bigger lessons but before

I get to that I want to address

something that you may be wondering

about the notion of fetal learning may

conjure up for you attempts to enrich

the fetus like playing Mozart through

headphones placed on a pregnant belly

but actually the nine-month long process

of molding and shaping that goes on in

the womb is a lot more visceral and

consequential than that much of what a

pregnant woman encounters in her daily

life the air she breathes the food and

drinks she consumes the chemical she’s

exposed to even the emotions she feels

are shared in some fashion with her

fetus they make up a mix of influences

as individual and idiosyncratic as the

woman herself the fetus incorporates

these offerings into its own body makes

them part of its flesh and blood and

often it does something more it treats

these maternal contributions as

information as what I like to call

biological postcards from the