Babies

Breastfeeding may boost IQ in babies: Study

Children who are breastfed score higher on IQ tests and perform better in school, scientists say.

A new study by sociologists at Brigham Young University pinpoints two parenting skills as the real source of this cognitive boost: Responding to children’s emotional cues and reading to children starting at 9 months of age.

Breastfeeding mothers tend to do both of those things, said lead study author Ben Gibbs.

“It’s really the parenting that makes the difference,” said Gibbs.

“Breastfeeding matters in others ways, but this actually gives us a better mechanism and can shape our confidence about interventions that promote school readiness,” said Gibbs.

According to the analysis, improvements in sensitivity to emotional cues and time reading to children could yield 2-3 months’ worth of brain development by age 4 (as measured by math and reading readiness assessments).

“Because these are four-year-olds, a month or two represents a non-trivial chunk of time,” Gibbs said.

“And if a child is on the edge of needing special education, even a small boost across some eligibility line could shape a child’s educational trajectory,” said Gibbs.

Researchers utilised a national data set that followed 7,500 mothers and their children from birth to five years of age.

The data set is rich with information on the home environment, including how early and how often parents read to their kids.

Additionally, each of the mothers in the study also participated in video-taped activities with their children.

As the child tried to complete a challenging task, the mother’s supportiveness and sensitivity to their child’s emotional cues were measured.

Sandra Jacobson of Wayne State University School of Medicine noted that children in the study who were breastfed for 6 months or longer performed the best on reading assessments because they also “experienced the most optimal parenting practices.

“Gibbs and Forste found that reading to an infant every day as early as age 9 months and sensitivity to the child’s cues during social interactions, rather than breastfeeding per se, were significant predictors of reading readiness at age 4 years,” said Jacobson.

The study was published in The Journal of Pediatrics.

Source: Times of India

 

Babies can remember words heard before birth

Babies can remember words heard before birth. It is a so-called `pseudoword

Researchers said an unborn child does indeed hear everything, including people`s voices, which allows them to begin learning words and remembering them once they`re born.

“We believe this shows how well the brain at this age adapts to sounds. It is a sign of very early language learning, or adaptation to the sounds they heard,” said study co-author Minna Huotilainen, from the University of Helsinki`s Finnish Center of Excellence in Interdisciplinary Music Research.

“A newborn baby is not an empty canvas, but has already learned how his or her mother and other family members speak,” said Huotilainen.

Researchers tested the memory of Finnish foetuses by exposing them to a single word – “tatata” – that means nothing in the Finnish language, `Health Day News` reported.

“It is a so-called `pseudoword` that is important for research. It has three syllables, and we chose such a long word to make it challenging for the small brains to find the changes and give them something difficult to learn. Such a word could exist in Finnish. It follows all the rules of the Finnish language,” Huotilainen said.

From the 29th week of pregnancy until birth, about half of the 33 pregnant women in the study listened to recordings of the word repeated hundreds of times.

Sometimes the recordings presented the word with a different middle syllable (“to”) or pronounced differently.

Researchers used scans to test the activity in the brains of all the babies when they heard the word after their birth. Those who had heard it before “showed an enhanced reaction to this specific word,” Huotilainen said.

“They were able to process the word better, and also they were able to detect changes in the word better,” Huotilainen said.

The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.