Can babies really pick their parents out?

Submitted by cwx149 t3_z98ewn in askscience

My wife and I had a baby girl and she spent some the time in the NICU and the nurses said talking to her in her isolet(sp?) Would help her. Can babies really pick their parents voice out that early?

And they said our daughter could smell my wife and gave us a little blankie to get my wife's scent on. Can babies really do that too?

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mayonnaisejane t1_iyi3r8y wrote

They've been hearing her voice in-utero for a while, so yes, she's able to recognize her mother's smell and voice because he's lived with it for months already. If you talked to the bump she knows your voice too!

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dmnhntr86 t1_iyit3e3 wrote

How do we know they can still recognize from outside the womb? It's got to sound very different coming through the air instead of through the mother's body.

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mayonnaisejane t1_iyj4xqm wrote

The exact mechanism of how they determined this, I don't know but it was likely similar to studies they did that I have seen the video from, where they determined that babies only hours old know what sounds are their own mom's native language and what sounds aren't, because they give those sounds more of their attention. Likely the same kind of measurement can tell if they preferentially listen for the sound of their mom vs. The sound of other people.

https://www.washington.edu/news/2013/01/02/while-in-womb-babies-begin-learning-language-from-their-mothers/

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_Atheius_ t1_iyhyva2 wrote

Yes, especially the mother. The moment the ear to brain connection starts functioning it can hear the mother's voice. Anyone else too if they're loud enough and spend enough time around the mother. Outside of the heartbeat and breathing, the voice is the most common sound in it's little world, and once they're out, it jumps straight to number one.

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