Priscilla Dunstan
Australian Priscilla Dunstan could hear a piece of Mozart just once and play it back on her violin by the age of five. Her father, director of the educational research centre at the University of New South Wales, discovered that his daughter had a ‘photographic memory’ for sound.
As a teenager, Priscilla toured Europe and Australia as a talented concert violinist. She then spent more than 10 years in the world of opera as a mezzo-soprano.
In 1998, Priscilla became the mother of a son, Tom. Thanks to her exceptional hearing, Priscilla discovered that her son Tom's cries were not simply random sounds. She recorded the different combinations of sounds in a diary and noticed that each sound was linked to a specific need. By recognising the sound, she knew what she could do to soothe him again.
After her own experiences with Tom, Priscilla's theory was tested on more than a thousand babies from more than thirty nationalities. Observations and tests were carried out over nine years, supplemented by three major international studies. All three studies confirmed the existence of the universal reflex sounds.
Dunstan Baby Language has been thoroughly researched since 1998. More than a thousand babies and their parents from seven different countries and over thirty different nationalities took part. The scientific research was conducted in Australia, the United States and Great Britain in 2006 and 2007. Research is also ongoing in the Netherlands. In the summer of 2024, for example, a study was completed at the University of Amsterdam. This study examined whether applying the method has an effect on mothers and, if so, what kind of effect.
