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Prenatal experience and neonatal responsiveness to vocal expressions of emotion
Author(s) -
Mastropieri Diane,
Turkewitz Gerald
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
developmental psychobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.055
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1098-2302
pISSN - 0012-1630
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1098-2302(199911)35:3<204::aid-dev5>3.0.co;2-v
Subject(s) - psychology , presentation (obstetrics) , active listening , developmental psychology , emotional expression , relevance (law) , cognitive psychology , audiology , communication , medicine , radiology , political science , law
Newborn differentiation of emotion and the relevance of prenatal experience in influencing responsiveness to emotion was tested by examining newborn responses to the presentation of a range of vocal expressions. Differential responding was observed, as indicated by an increase in eye opening behavior in response to the presentation of happy speech patterns. More importantly, differential responding was observed only when the infants listened to emotional speech as spoken by speakers of their maternal language. No evidence of discrimination was found in the groups of infants listening to the same vocal expressions in a novel language. The results suggest that as a consequence of prenatal exposure to the distinctive prosodic maternal speech patterns that specify different emotions and to the temporally related stimuli created by distinctive maternal physiological concomitants of emotion, the fetus learns to differentiate those emotional speech patterns typical of the infant's maternal language. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Dev Psychobiol 35: 204–214, 1999