A Review of the Evidence for the Beginning of Language Learning in Fetal Life

New research techniques and theories on fetus/infant have suggested that language learning begins in the fluid world of the uterine and it continues throughout the life. This study is a review on studies that examine the fetus response to auditory stimulus, evidence of language learning during the fetal life, and methods for examining these cases in the fetus. The title and abstract of all published articles from 1980 to 2018 in databases including Web of Science, Google Scholar, Scopus and PubMed were searched to find the articles that were related to the existence, formation, and development of pre-linguistic skills in the fetuses and infants. As a result of this comprehensive search, 106 articles were found. After careful investigation of their abstracts, 52 articles that were completely compatible with the study objectives were included and used to write the article. Methods including change in the pattern of sucking and heart rate of the infant/fetus, and other types of behavioral scales have shown that the human fetus can remember and recognize the previously exposed human voices and language. In fact, by developing auditory skills during the second half of pregnancy, the first fetus experiences of the spoken language are formed. Prosody and rhythm of speech have a central role in early language learning, and such information are available to fetus and is processed by the auditory system. Therefore, the fetal brain can really understand and learn most of the main aspects of the language at near-birth.