The acoustic environment of the fetus and the mother-fetus communicative relationship: A longitudinal study on a primiparae sample and their children

The sensorial experience of the fetus in the maternal womb represents an aspect of great interest since several studies have shown how the newborn's competences are what follows a complex previous intra uterine development. Literature underlines that from the 23 th week onwards the fetus reacts to sounds, shows habituation to a repeated acoustic stimulus and can discriminate sounds. Therefore the fetus is able to perceive and distinguish both the internal maternal body sounds and the external acoustic stimuli. The purpose of this longitudinal observational survey was to compare a questionnaire on the fetal auditive exposure, administered to 58 sixth to ninth month pregnant women, to a questionnaire recording the communicative and linguistic development of their children when 10 and 18 months old. With "fetal auditive exposure" we mean the natural exposure to acoustic stimuli that the fetuses experience through their mother's living environment. In our sample we found that intentional linguistic communication from mother to the fetus is the relevant factor that can be associated to the communicative development of the children.