Mother-Fetus Communicative Relationship: A Longitudinal Study on 58 Primiparae and their Children during the First Eighteen Months

The purpose of this longitudinal observational survey was to compare a
questionnaire on fetal auditive exposure, administered to 58 pregnant women, to the Mac Arthur questionnaire
recording the communicative and linguistic development of their children when ten- and eighteen-months-old.
By ‘fetal auditive exposure’ we mean the natural exposure to the acoustic stimuli that the fetuses experience
through their mother’s living environment. Fifty-eight women in their sixth to ninth month of pregnancy were
given a questionnaire evaluating the characteristics of the acoustic aspects of the mother’s daily life
environment and the quality and quantity of the mother’s linguistic communication. Subsequently, the children
were tested with the Italian version of the Mac Arthur questionnaire. Lastly, the two questionnaires were
compared in order to examine possible associations between the child communicative and linguistic
development and the fetal auditive exposure. In our sample we found that intentional linguistic communication
from mother to the fetus is a relevant factor that can be associated to the communicative development of the
children. The frequency of intentional daily mother-fetus linguistic communication shows an association with the
linguistic understanding and the communicative actions and gestures of 18-month children. KEY WORDS:
prenatal development, auditive exposure, linguistic development, mother-fetus communication.