Choose one of the myths from the Myths and Misunderstandings Specify the Myth you will be focusing on within your paper. (use claim 4 below) Submit a brief outline of the paper; this can be informal, just share what you plan on covering.

Jamez

04 Apr 2025 • 8 min read

This assignment is made of assignment 1 and assignment 2 from the same myth

Assignment 1 – 1 page

Choose one of the myths from the Myths and Misunderstandings

Specify the Myth you will be focusing on within your paper. (use claim 4 below)
Submit a brief outline of the paper; this can be informal, just share what you plan on covering.
Select and share APA references at least two scholarly Journal articles and one or more scholarly websites you plan to use.

Reference: Mercer, Jean A., et al. Thinking Critically about Child Development : Examining Myths and Misunderstandings, SAGE Publications, Incorporated, 2019. ProQuest Ebook Central,

Claim 4 : Unborn babies are not influenced much by the environment outside the mother’s body.

Malinda is pregnant with twins and is getting very big and clumsy. She needs to rest a lot and has time to think about the babies. “Do they listen when I play music?” she wonders. “Sometimes I think they kick in rhythm to it. And what if people talk loudly? I had a fight with my husband the other day, and we called each other some nasty names. We made up later, but I wonder if the babies heard the argument and remember it. My grandmother used to say a baby could get a strawberry mark if a mother ate too many strawberries. I’m sure that’s not true, but I wonder about these other things.” How much do Malinda’s soon-to-be-born babies actually experience? Can unborn babies figure out anything that is happening around them? Do they learn from and remember events that occurred during gestation? Or do they start absolutely from scratch with their first experiences on the day they are born? The unborn human being is in a peculiar position, both literally (upside down, at least toward the end of gestation) and figuratively. Surrounded by protective membranes and cushioning amniotic fluid, the fetus is defended from all but the most direct blows. Even during the early embryonic period, before the membranes and fluid are present, the developing organism is thoroughly protected from impact by the tissues of the mother’s body. If a normal pregnancy could be easily damaged by external physical forces, many babies would be lost to injury and abortion clinics would not exist. On the other hand, an unborn child can be seriously damaged by infectious agents and toxic substances that cross the placenta, an organ that filters out most, but not all, potentially harmful materials. Harm can thus come to the fetus from some aspects of the environment that penetrate the mother’s body, and if this harm includes damage to the brain, later cognitive development may be compromised. The developing individual can even be predisposed to diseases that will not appear until adulthood (Phillips, 2006). But what about the harmless aspects of the environment? Not every effect of the outside world is a dangerous one. Can the fetus be influenced by external events, either directly or indirectly? Harmful effects are defined by the damage to the physical development of a fetus or by the creation of long-term behavioral or intellectual problems. Are other harmless effects shown in behavioral changes, either temporary or lasting? The abilities of prematurely born babies to see, hear, taste, and smell certainly suggest that a fetus past a certain age of gestation has the sensory capacity to respond to stimulation. Of course, for stimulation to occur, the stimulus must reach the unborn through the tissues of the mother’s body, the membranes, and the fluid that surrounds the fetus and fills his or her mouth, nose, and ear canals. Sounds, tastes, and the physical pressures of touch can all do this. Animal studies and some work on human beings have shown that flavorful foods eaten by the mother transfer in taste and smell to the amniotic fluid, as they do later to mother’s milk. If a pregnant mother eats garlic, lemon, coffee, or chocolate-flavored foods, the unborn baby experiences those flavors as they pass over the tongue in the amniotic fluid. Rat pups prefer to drink milk flavored with particular tastes that were given to their mother during her pregnancy, and some researchers have speculated that humans like the flavors they experienced prenatally when certain foods were part of their mothers’ diets. The taste of the amniotic fluid acts as a “flavor bridge” that encourages a preference for foods frequently served at a family’s table (Mennella, 1995; Mennella & Beauchamp, 1993). Taste experiences are delivered through the amniotic fluid. The flavors’ sources are actually inside the mother’s body because the mother consumed them. But what about the influence of events that remain external to the mother? Can the fetus hear what is going on in the outside world? Sound waves can travel through a mother’s body and through the amniotic fluid— in fact, they travel faster through solids and liquids than they do through the air. The sounds of a mother’s heartbeat are known to penetrate the uterus, and, rather less romantically, the sounds of her stomach and intestines must do so also. Sounds that come from outside the body are also carried into the uterus, but they are muffled by the mother’s tissues and partially masked by other simultaneous sounds, such as the maternal heartbeat. The fetus is not in the ideal situation for listening to details of sounds, especially if the mother has high blood pressure, which changes the transmission of sound to the fetus (Lee, Brown, Hains, & Kisilevsky, 2007). Because sound, however muffled, can penetrate to the unborn baby and because many hearing functions develop months before birth, it is possible for a baby to “listen” to external sound events, such as people speaking or music. But whether the fetus is actually affected by what he or she hears is still unclear. To prove such an effect, the unborn baby’s behavior needs to change in a measurable way, either immediately or in a way that can be detected after birth. Some years ago, a remarkable study concluded that babies can learn from speech sounds heard before birth— not what words mean but rather some information about the sounds and rhythms of language. In their complicated and careful study, DeCasper and Spence (1986) prepared two stories: the familiar Cat in the Hat and an alternative version called Dog in the Fog. (A third story they used is left out of this discussion for purposes of brevity.) Women who were about 7.5 months pregnant were asked to record the two stories. After they had done so, the women were assigned one of the stories to read aloud twice each day until childbirth. The reading was to be done in a quiet place and at a time when the fetus was “awake” and moving around. These precautions were to ensure that the fetus could hear as clearly as possible and that he or she was as likely as possible to be “listening” to the stories. About two days after the babies were born, the babies were tested for reactions to their mother’s recordings of Cat in the Hat and Dog in the Fog . Each baby was given a nipple with a switch inside it, and by sucking faster or slower the baby could activate the switch and turn on one or the other of the recordings. The researchers wanted to find out whether the babies would change their sucking rates more readily if the change let them hear the familiar story that had been read before they were born or if they would respond more to a chance to hear the unfamiliar story. Their responses were also compared to those of babies who had not heard the stories before they were born. The babies whose mothers had read aloud before they were born changed their behavior more rapidly when the action let them hear the familiar story than when the change turned on the unfamiliar story. Whether the story was Cat in the Hat or Dog in the Fog did not matter. The babies worked to hear the story that had been read aloud before they were born, suggesting that they had learned from what they heard. The idea that mothers can “bond” with their unborn babies by talking to them or tapping or rubbing their pregnant bellies is discussed in popular books (Stoppard, 2008), but no research evidence exists to support the idea of intentional maternal-infant communication before birth. Conclusion Before birth, babies can experience tastes and sounds and may learn from experiences in ways that can affect their later behavior. It’s possible that Malinda’s twins will learn a preference for the music she plays before they are born or for some speech sounds, but they do not understand the words themselves when they hear people speaking. Critical Thinking 1. 2. 3. If unborn babies learn from sounds, as DeCasper and Spence (1986) concluded, the same should be true of prematurely born babies of the same gestational ages as the readto fetuses in the DeCasper and Spence study. Describe how you would carry out a similar study to test the effects of hearing a story on prematurely born babies. Use a child development textbook to identify problems of premature babies that your study might need to consider. Use a child development textbook to find information about habituation. Do the facts about habituation suggest that newborn babies would prefer the familiar story or an unfamiliar one? A familiar taste or an unfamiliar one? Explain your answer. In the DeCasper and Spence study, the researchers gave about half of the babies a chance to listen to the familiar story first and the novel story second. For the other half of the group, they reversed the order. What was the point of doing this? Why did DeCasper and Spence assign each mother a story to read aloud only after she had recorded both stories? Explain your answer. Some of the studies on prenatal taste experiences were performed on unborn animals. Using the bibliography of a child development textbook, look up the titles of studies cited as relevant to prenatal and newborn development. What proportion appear to have involved human subjects and what proportion involved animals? Are there problems or advantages to this situation? Keep in mind that the goal of studying child development is the understanding of events in human life.

References

DeCasper, A. J., & Spence, M. J. (1986). Prenatal maternal speech influences newborns’ perception of speech. Infant Behavior and Development, 9, 133– 150.

Lee, C. T., Brown, C. A., Hains, S. M. J., & Kisilevsky, B. S. (2007). Fetal development: Voice processing in normotensive and hypertensive pregnancies. Biological Research for Nursing, 8, 272– 282.

Mennella, J. A. (1995). Mother’s milk: A medium for early flavor experiences. Journal of Human Lactation, 11, 39– 45.

Mennella, J., & Beauchamp, G. (1993). Early flavor experiences: When do they start? Zero to Three, 14(2), 1– 7.

Phillips, D. I. W. (2006). External influences on the fetus and their long-term consequences. Lupus, 15, 794– 800. Stoppard, M. (2008). Bonding before birth. New York: DK.

Assignment 2 – 6 pages

Choose one myth you are interested in(Claim 4 : Unborn babies are not influenced much by the environment outside the mother’s body.)

For the myth you will find several accompanying resources from the References at the end of the topical discussion.
From these readings and other resources, locate two or more scholarly journal articles and one or more scholarly websites to apply within the paper
Do research on the topic you choose based on the resources mentioned above and develop your findings into a paper. Your paper should include:
Title: come up with a title based on your research of the myth and your interests.
Introduction: provide an Introduction to the topic you choose.
Subheadings: organize your essay into several sections with subheadings, indicating the issues addressed.
Conclusion: end your paper with a Conclusion.
References: include two or more scholarly journal articles and one or more scholarly websites in your intext citations and references follow APA format
Example: Claim #12 (p. 61): Parents need to have contact with their babies right after birth, so they can bond with them.
If you choose this myth you will be researching attachment/parent-infant bonding/maternal-infant interaction and further researching the general questions provided in Claim #12: Does a parent's relationship with a child really depend on immediate contact after the child is born? Depending on your interests you might look into infants that are in the ICU for prolonged periods of time after birth, or review what hospitals do to support attachment in difficult situations.

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