Not long ago, many people believed that babies only wanted food and to be ke

Not long ago, many people believed that babies only wanted food and to be kept warm and dry. Some people(1)thought babies were not able to learn things until they were five or six months old. Yet doctors in the United States say babies begin learning on their first day of life. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development is a federal government(2)agency. Its goal is to(3)identify which experiences can influence healthy development in people.
    Research(4)scientists at the Institute note that babies are strongly influenced by their(5)environment. They say a baby will smile if her mother does something(6)amusing. A baby learns to get the best care possible by smiling to please her mother or other(7)caregiver. This is how babies learn to(8)connect and communicate with other people.(9)The American researchers say this ability to learn exists in a baby even before birth. They say newborn babies can recognize and understand sounds they heard while they were still developing inside their mothers.(10)A study last month from Europe found evidence that unborn babies can remember sounds. The researchers studied almost one hundred pregnant women. They played sounds to the baby still growing inside their mother and watched its movements with special devices. They found that by thirty weeks of development the unborn baby could remember a sound for ten minutes. By the thirty-fourth week, it could remember the sound for four weeks.