Studying learning in the womb.
Studying learning in the womb.
复制标题
在子宫里学习学习。
DOI：
10.1126/science.6740312
复制
发表时间：
1984
期刊：
影响因子：
56.9
通讯作者：
G. Kolata
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
G. Kolata
Research scientists Who study the behavior of human infants believed until recently that the baby's world was, as psychologist William James wrote, a place of" booming buzzing confusion." But the picture now emerging is quite different. Babies have been shown to respond to their environment from the first day of postnatal life. They can discriminate between objects that they see and can even recognize their mother's voice. How and when does a baby learn these things? A relatively new body of data indicates that the learning begins before birth. This idea suggests a whole series of questions about how and when an unborn baby can learn. These questions are now being addressed by a small group of developmental psychologists and behavioral neurobi-ologists who are studying fetal learning by using established techniques that can measure learning in adult animals. Their research, says Norman Krasnegor, chief of the human learning and behavior branch of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Be-thesda, Maryland, is of great practical as well as theoretical importance. Research on prenatal learning offers a way to assess the development of premature infants, Krasnegor says. Babies weighing as little as 1000 to 1500 grams at birth (about 2.2 to 3.3 pounds) are now routinely cared for in newborn intensive care units, but physicians frequently find it difficult to predict which of these babies will develop normally and which will not and how to help those whose behavioral development is abnormal. By learning when during gestation different types oflearning can occur, developmental behavioral neurobiologists hope to gain a new understanding of the functional organization of the brain prior to birth. Such research, Krasnegor re-marks, should help psychologists and therapists to assess and to teachbabies whose brains are injured as a consequence of premature birth. In addition, the studies will undoubt-edly be useful to research on behavioral teratology-the investigation of sub-stances that produce birth defects of the mind. A few such substances, such as antiepilepsy drugs and large amounts of alcohol, are known. But to identify oth-ers researchers need refined knowledge of how the mind develops and whether
