【英语时差8,16】听到胎儿

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Did you ever do this when you were young: Dive to the bottom of a swimming pool with a friend, then have your friend yell a phrase into the water?   You listen to the phrase all low and garbled¹, then try to guess what it was. This low, muffled², underwater noise is how the world would sound if you were inside a womb.

Researchers have placed tiny microphones inside a pregnant woman's uterus. They found that outside noises became much lower and muffled, and about thirty decibels³ quieter. Do these noises just wash around the fetus⁴ like so much amniotic fluid, or can the fetus actually hear them?

Actually, after twenty eight weeks a fetus begins to hear the internal sounds of its mother's body--the rush of blood and the rumble⁵ of the digestive system. By the third trimester, the fetus can respond to external noises too. As many expectant mothers know, a sudden car horn can start a fetus kicking.

Not only can fetuses⁶ hear outside noises, they sometimes remember what they've heard. One study found that infants who repeatedly heard a soap opera theme song in the womb reacted positively⁷ when they heard that same music after birth.

Perhaps this ability to remember helps a newborn recognize its mother's voice. A fetus can't hear specific words or intonation--these are too muffled. Instead, they remember the rhythm of their mothers' voices. To check this out, researchers gave newborns a special nipple rigged to a tape recorder. By changing the way they sucked, these infants could modify the cadence⁸ of a prerecorded voice. Eighty percent of these newborns sucked in the way that produced a voice with their mother's specific rhythm.  

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