Towards a New Study on Associative Learning in Human Fetuses: Fetal Associative Learning in Primates

Research has revealed that fetuses can learn from events in their environment. The most convincing evidence for fetal learning is habituation to vibroacoustic stimulation (VAS) in human fetuses and classical conditioning in rat fetuses. However, these two research areas have been independent of each other. There have been few attempts at classical conditioning in human fetuses, and little evidence that non-human animals can learn from events if they remain, untouched within the uterus. When the conditioned chimpanzee infant was tested at 1 and 2 months after birth, she responded to the CS+, but not the CS- presentations, suggesting that her memory persisted for at least 2 months. This study provides a new technique that can be applied to humans for the study of long-lasting learning in the fetuses. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.