Name: Ted.comトーク - 赤ちゃんが生まれる前に学ぶこと (Ted.com talk - What babies learn before they're born)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T04:38:03.000Z
Duration: 19 min 26 s
Description: VoiceTubeの動画で発音を聞きながら英語表現を覚えよう！学べる英語：

My subject today is learning.And in that spirit, I want to spring on you all a pop

quiz.Ready?When does learning begin?Now as you ponder that question,maybe you're

thinking about the first day of preschoolor kindergarten,the first time that kids are

in a classroom with a teacher.Or maybe you've called to mind the toddler phasewhen

children are learning how to walk and talkand use a fork.Maybe you've encountered the

Zero-to-Three movement,which asserts that the most important years for learningare

the earliest ones.And so your answer to my question would be:Learning begins at

birth. Well today I want to present to youan idea

that may be surprisingand may even seem implausible,but which is supported by the

latest evidencefrom psychology and biology.And that is that some of the most important learning

we ever dohappens before we're born,while we're still in the womb.Now I'm a science

reporter.I write books and magazine articles.And I'm also a mother.And those two roles came

together for mein a book that I wrote called "Origins.""Origins" is a report from the

front linesof an exciting new fieldcalled fetal origins.Fetal origins is a scientific

disciplinethat emerged just about two decades ago,and it's based on the theorythat

our health and well-being throughout our livesis crucially affectedby the nine months we

spend in the womb.Now this theory was of more than just intellectual interest to me.I

was myself pregnantwhile I was doing the research for the book.And one of the most

fascinating insightsI took from this workis that we're all learning about the worldeven

before we enter it. When we hold our babies for the first time,we

might imagine that they're clean slates,unmarked by life,when in fact, they've already been

shaped by usand by the particular world we live in.Today I want to share with you

some of the amazing thingsthat scientists are discoveringabout what fetuses learnwhile

they're still in their mothers' bellies. First of all,they learn the sound of their

mothers' voices.Because sounds from the outside worldhave to travel through the mother's

abdominal tissueand through the amniotic fluid that surrounds the fetus,the voices

fetuses hear,starting around the fourth month of gestation,are muted and muffled.One

researcher saysthat they probably sound a lot like the the voice of Charlie Brown's

teacherin the old "Peanuts" cartoon.But the pregnant woman's own voicereverberates

through her body,reaching the fetus much more readily.And because the fetus is with

her all the time,it hears her voice a lot.Once the baby's born, it recognizes her voiceand

it prefers listening to her voiceover anyone else's.

How can we know this?Newborn babies can't do much,but one thing they're really good

at is sucking.Researchers take advantage of this factby rigging up two rubber nipples,so

that if a baby sucks on one,it hears a recording of its mother's voiceon a pair

of headphones,and if it sucks on the other nipple,it hears a recording of a female

stranger's voice.Babies quickly show their preferenceby choosing the first one.Scientists

also take advantage of the factthat babies will slow down their suckingwhen something

interests themand resume their fast suckingwhen they get bored.This is how researchers discoveredthat,

after women repeatedly read alouda section of Dr. Seuss' "The Cat in the Hat" while they

were pregnant,their newborn babies recognized that passagewhen they hear it outside the

womb.My favorite experiment of this kindis the one that showed that the babiesof women

who watched a certain soap operaevery day during pregnancyrecognized the theme song

of that showonce they were born.So fetuses are even learningabout the particular language

that's spokenin the world that they'll be born into.

A study published last yearfound that from birth, from the moment of birth,babies

cry in the accentof their mother's native language.French babies cry on a rising

notewhile German babies end on a falling note,imitating the melodic contoursof

those languages.Now why would this kind of fetal learningbe useful?It may have

evolved to aid the baby's survival.From the moment of birth,the baby responds most

to the voiceof the person who is most likely to care for it --its mother.It even

makes its criessound like the mother's language,which may further endear the baby

to the mother,and which may give the baby a head startin the critical taskof learning

how to understand and speakits native language. But it's not just soundsthat fetuses are

learning about in utero.It's also tastes and smells.By seven months of gestation,the

fetus' taste buds are fully developed,and its olfactory receptors, which allow it to

smell,are functioning.The flavors of the food a pregnant woman eatsfind their

way into the amniotic fluid,which is continuously swallowedby the fetus.Babies seem to

remember and prefer these tastesonce they're out in the world.In one experiment, a group

of pregnant womenwas asked to drink a lot of carrot juiceduring their third trimester

of pregnancy,while another group of pregnant womendrank only water.Six months later,

the women's infantswere offered cereal mixed with carrot juice,and their facial

expressions were observed while they ate it.The offspring of the carrot juice drinking womenate

more carrot-flavored cereal,and from the looks of it,they seemed to enjoy it more.

A sort of French version of this experimentwas carried out in Dijon, Francewhere researchers

foundthat mothers who consumed food and drinkflavored with licorice-flavored anise

during pregnancyshowed a preference for aniseon their first day of life,and

again, when they were tested later,on their fourth day of life.Babies whose mothers

did not eat anise during pregnancyshowed a reaction that translated roughly as "yuck."What

this meansis that fetuses are effectively being taught by their mothersabout what

is safe and good to eat.Fetuses are also being taughtabout the particular culture

that they'll be joiningthrough one of culture's most powerful expressions,which is food.They're

being introduced to the characteristic flavors and spicesof their culture's cuisineeven

before birth. Now it turns out that fetuses are learning

even bigger lessons.But before I get to that,I want to address something that you

may be wondering about.The notion of fetal learningmay conjure up for you attempts

to enrich the fetus --like playing Mozart through headphonesplaced on a pregnant

belly.But actually, the nine-month-long processof molding and shaping that goes

on in the wombis a lot more visceral and consequential than that.Much of what a

pregnant woman encounters in her daily life --the air she breathes,the food and

drink she consumes,the chemicals she's exposed to,even the emotions she feels

--are shared in some fashion with her fetus.They make up a mix of influencesas individual

and idiosyncraticas the woman herself.The fetus incorporates these offeringsinto

its own body,makes them part of its flesh and blood.And often it does something more.It

treats these maternal contributionsas information,as what I like to call biological postcardsfrom

the world outside. So what a fetus is learning about in uterois

not Mozart's "Magic Flute"but answers to questions much more critical to its survival.Will

it be born into a world of abundanceor scarcity?Will it be safe and protected,or

will it face constant dangers and threats?Will it live a long, fruitful lifeor a short,

harried one?The pregnant woman's diet and stress level in particularprovide important

clues to prevailing conditionslike a finger lifted to the wind.The resulting tuning and

tweakingof a fetus' brain and other organsare part of what give us humansour enormous flexibility,our

ability to thrivein a huge variety of environments,from the country to the city,from the tundra

to the desert. To conclude, I want to tell you two storiesabout

how mothers teach their children about the worldeven before they're born.In the

autumn of 1944,the darkest days of World War II,German troops blockaded Western

Holland,turning away all shipments of food.The opening of the Nazi's siegewas followed by

one of the harshest winters in decades --so cold the water in the canals froze solid.Soon

food became scarce,with many Dutch surviving on just 500 calories a day --a quarter

of what they consumed before the war.As weeks of deprivation stretched into months,some

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Ted.comトーク - 赤ちゃんが生まれる前に学ぶこと (Ted.com talk - What babies learn before they're born)

deprivation

critical

diabetes

obesity