Just saw this, relating to a study published last week about how exposure to languages in the womb helps a child to be bilingual.
Excerpt:
Two groups of newborns were tested in these experiments: English monolinguals (whose mothers spoke only English during pregnancy) and Tagalog-English bilinguals (whose mothers spoke both Tagalog, a language spoken in the Philippines, and English regularly during pregnancy). The researchers employed a method known as “high-amplitude sucking-preference procedure†to study the infants’ language preferences. This method capitalizes on the newborns’ sucking reflex — increased sucking indicates interest in a stimulus. In the first experiment, infants heard 10 minutes of speech, with every minute alternating between English and Tagalog.
Results showed that English monolingual infants were more interested in English than Tagalog — they exhibited increased sucking behavior when they heard English than when they heard Tagalog being spoken. However, bilingual infants had an equal preference for both English and Tagalog. These results suggest that prenatal bilingual exposure may affect infants’ language preferences, preparing bilingual infants to listen to and learn about both of their native languages.
Full article:
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/media/releases/2010/werker.cfm
