Dr. Christine Moon, a world-renowned expert on language recognition learned by newborns in the womb, will speak at Wartburg College Monday, Sept. 30.

Moon, a psychology professor at Pacific Lutheran University and co-founder of the International Perinatal Brain and Behavior Network, will address “Learning Before Birth: What Is Possible?” at 7 p.m. in McCaskey Lyceum. The event is free, and the public is invited to attend.

Moon’s research found that newborns  — only hours old — are cognizant of language learned in the womb. She will discuss her research, which was published earlier this year, and its implications for early learning.

“This is the first study that shows fetuses learn prenatally about the particular speech sounds of a mother’s language,” Moon said. “This study moves the measurable result of experience with speech sounds from six months of age to before birth.”

Moon and her co-authors from the University of Washington and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, compared the responses of 40 American and 40 Swedish newborns to 17 native vowel sounds spoken to them by their mothers for 10 weeks prior to birth and foreign sounds.

After listening to the two sets of sounds while sucking on pacifiers wired to computers to measure their reaction, the infants in both groups stopped sucking when they heard a familiar native vowel sound, but sucked longer when hearing foreign sounds.

The mother’s voice was used in the research because it is amplified in the womb by her body and movements.

Moon, whose research is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is planning further research on the recognition of other speech sounds.