FREQUENCY DISCRIMINATION BY THE FETUS

The ability to discriminate between acoustic signals of different freq uencies is fundamental to the interpretation of auditory information a nd the development of language perception and production. The fact tha t the human fetus responds to sounds of different frequencies raises t he question of whether the fetus is able to discriminate between them? To investigate whether the fetus has the ability to discriminate betw een different pure tone acoustic stimuli and different speech sounds t he following study used an habituation paradigm and examined whether t he fetus could discriminate between two pure tone acoustic stimuli, 25 0 Hz and 500 Hz, or two speech sounds, [ba] and [bi], at 27 and 35 wee ks of gestational age. The results indicated that the fetus is capable of discriminating between the different sounds, i.e. 250 Hz and 500 H z and [ba] and [bi] at 35 weeks of gestational age but less able at 27 weeks of gestational age. The implications of this for the developmen t of the auditory system are discussed.