Salon.com > Babies

Study: Language learning may begin in utero

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 22:37:00 +0000

A new study out of Pacific Lutheran University shows that fetuses can learn individual speech sounds like vowels and consonants while still in the womb. The study, set to be published in the journal Acta Paediatrica, is the first to indicate that language learning can begin prenatally.

Researchers gathered data from 40 infants in the U.S. and another 40 in Sweden, all less than 3 days old. The newborns were tested on two types of vowel sounds -- 17 from their native language sounds and 17 from a foreign language. Researchers then measured the infant's response to the sounds by how long they sucked a pacifier connected to a computer. The babies could control how many times they heard the vowels by sucking continuously on the pacifier, hearing the same vowel sound until they paused. Sucking the pacifier again produced a new sound. According to Science Daily, the pattern reveals how infants absorb new information:

Are we born with a sense of fairness?

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 16:03:00 +0000

Evolutionary biologist Gordon Orians and I are working on a project to investigate the origins and evolution of the human sense of fairness, and the role it plays in modern social, economic, and political institutions. I recently gave a talk on the subject.

To begin the talk, I asked the audience members to recollect their first encounter with the concept of fairness. I had formed a fledgling hypothesis, and wanted to put it to the test.

As people raised their hands, I called on them to share their memories. A pattern quickly emerged:

“I had to take the rap for something my sister actually did!”
“My parents gave my brother a puppy, and I’m the one who loved dogs. He didn’t even like them.”
“I came from a family with nine siblings, and we had to fight each other for food.”
“I was an only child, and I really wanted a brother – all my friends had brothers.”
“I was foreign, and different, and all the other kids singled me out to pick on.”

Is Mississippi about to execute an innocent man?

Sat, 01 Dec 2012 16:00:00 +0000

We’ve had too many reminders over the years that the death penalty system is deeply flawed. Now we have one more, with the case of Jeffrey Havard, a man who is scheduled for execution in Mississippi, despite serious questions about his guilt.

Writing at theHuffington Post , Radley Balko describes how Havard was convicted in 2002 of murdering his girlfriend’s six-month-old daughter. Havard says he dropped the baby after giving her a bath – a terrible accident – but he was convicted after a private medical examiner claimed his autopsy found evidence of Shaken Baby Syndrome and sexual abuse.

But there are now questions surrounding those autopsy results. As Balko writes, “experts have begun to question the validity of the [SBS] diagnosis and how it's used in court, pointing out, for example, that a number of other factors could cause the symptoms that experts have been telling juries could be caused only by shaking.”

Drinking while pregnant can lower baby’s IQ

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 00:05:00 +0000

Drinking in the third trimester of pregnancy—even just a glass or two of alcohol a week—may lower a baby's IQ by a few points, according to new research. The issue has been long debated by doctors, but a new study led by Ron Gray, an epidemiologist at the University of Oxford, suggests that light drinking does harm a baby's brain development. Researchers tested for slow metabolizing genes in thousands of pregnant women—some who abstained from alcohol during pregnancy, and others who drank the equivalent of a half pint to three pints of beer (or three small glasses of wine) a week. Eight years later, researchers examined the IQ's of 4,167 of these women's children; they found across the board that women who drank lightly or not at all during pregnancy gave birth to children with higher IQ's. "This is good evidence to implicate moderate drinking during pregnancy having an effect on childhood IQ at age 8," says Gray. "Some women are going to be genetically more vulnerable or resilient than others to the effects of alcohol on the fetus, but we don't know who those people are."

Occubaby is born!

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 21:34:00 +0000

Salon is thrilled to share news of the birth of Occubaby. As we reported last month, a young woman who was pepper-sprayed by the NYPD during an early Occupy protest fell in love with, and became pregnant by, the street medic who tended to her stinging eyes.

According to a report from The Daily, Occubaby, real name Tegan Kathleen Grodt, was born to Robert Grodt and Kaylee Dedrick on Sept. 28. Even in its first days, the littlest Occupier can represent -- The Daily noted that a onesie bearing the letters "Occupy Wall Street" was sent to the couple by the OWS Screen Guild.

Watch the infamous pepper spraying incident below, an unexpected start to love and a new little life:

Can babies read?

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 16:08:00 +0000

The video clip on Larry Sanger’s website shows the cofounder of Wikipedia looking both scholarly and paternal with his owlish glasses, thinning pate, open book, and lapful of chubby-cheeked 3-year-old. Sanger’s son is gazing hard at the book pages and pronouncing words with the charming r-lessness of a toddler: “Congwess shall make no waw wespecting an establishment of wewigion or pwohibiting the fwee exewcise theweof or abwidging the fweedom of speech or of the pwess…” It’s not clear whether the boy is working toward a doctorate, like his dad's, or training to be our future pwesident. But it is stunningly obvious that the boy is sight-reading the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution at an age when most tots can’t tell an a from a b. When an influential philanthropist viewed the video, says Sanger, “he was gobsmacked.”