Uploaded March 27, 2015 Hearing their mother’s voice and heartbeat improve a baby’s development, say researchers from a Boston hospital and reported in the New York Times. The article says multiple studies have shown these sounds play crucial roles in baby’s early development and BYU-Hawaii students interviewed said they think the research is correct.Tiffany Staves, a junior majoring in graphic design from Florida, said, “I do believe that mother’s voice give the beneficial affect on baby’s development. It can help them learning how to talk and learn fast.” Nobuaki Suzuki is a senior in business management from Japan. He and his wife, Yurina Suzuki, have a 10- month-old baby girl. “Since I became a father, sometimes I Google online what are some useful methods for baby’s early education. I have heard this research before. Also I know that if a baby is surrounded by various languages in their environment, it will help develop baby’s ability of expression.”The study down at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston could help doctors and parents look after premature babies and improve their developmental and cognitive disabilities, reports the NYT.The researchers studied 40 babies born eight to 15 weeks prematurely who were confined to incubators and had little time with their mothers, reports the NYT. Using tiny speakers positioned inside the incubators, half of the babies heard the sounds of their mother’s voices and heartbeats for three additional hours a day while the other half didn’t received any additional sound.“After 30 days, babies in the first group had developed a significantly larger auditory cortex — the hearing center of the brain — than those in the second group,” reported the NYT.One of the authors of the study, Dr. Amir Lahav, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, said. “This is part of the biological recipe for how you cook a baby. Any deviation from original recipe” could result in developmental problems, he added.Other research published online in Developmental Science found moving with a partner to the musical beat may make babies more cooperative.The study was done on 48 toddlers. Each assistant held a baby and gently bounced with the beat of the Beatles’ music “Twist and Shout” for about two minutes, reported the NYT. “Then the scientists tested whether the babies would help out when an experimenter ‘accidentally’ dropped an object, or tried to pick up an object just out of hand’s reach,” the NYT article says. The researchers found babies who were bounced in a rhythm were more likely to help than those who were not bounced. Zhou Qinghua, a senior in accounting from China, is pregnant. She said, “I think the results shown in the research is reasonable. I have read the rhythm of a mother’s body movement make the baby inside the body have a sense of safety. After a baby is born, the mother’s voice and heartbeat can give baby this kind of feeling. That is why we have cradle a newborn baby.”Staves said since her husband is majoring in psychology, he has done a lot of reading on how to treat a baby, and she has received her baby early education from her husband. She said she felt knowing some of these methods would be useful when raising babies.
Writer: Siyang Chen
