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Psychological Development Across the Lifespan

Infancy

What other sensory skills do newborns have?

Infants are born with the capacity to recognize their mothers’ voice, which they have been able to hear throughout the last few months of pregnancy. Infants show preference to female voices over male voices and high-pitched voices over lower-pitched ones. Baby talk—or the use of high-pitched, simplified, repetitive, and highly melodic speech patterns—is found across different cultures and different languages. By using baby talk, adults and older children reflexively adapt their speech patterns to infants’ capabilities. Babies are also born with a developed sense of smell and the ability to discriminate sweet tastes from salty, bitter, or sour ones.



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