Thoraiya DyerUnderachiever? You Should Have Started Earlier: Prenatal Education Part 2 (BabyPlus)
June 26th 2008 01:52
If you didn’t get the marks you wanted in your final high school exams, maybe you should sue your mother for not using BabyPlus when she was pregnant with you.
BabyPlus calls itself on its website ( Really Long Link ),
“An Audio Device That Improves Intellectual Abilities Before Birth.”
“Q: How do the BabyPlus sounds educate my baby?
A: The unborn child receives very little stimulation in the uterus. The only sound that it can clearly discern is the maternal heartbeat. By providing the infant with sounds which closely mimic the maternal heartbeat but which vary in subtly increasing ways, the child's brain learns one of the most basic skills of all - discrimination - before she/he is born”
By that reckoning, women with heart defects producing an irregular heartbeat should have genius children. Women with irritable bowels who fart a lot should have gifted offspring.
(Picture stolen from here: Really Long Link )
It’s funny. I always thought intellectual abilities in children were both inherited from parents and influenced by nutrition (Malnutrition, learning, and intelligence: Really Long Link ), Genetics mediate relation of birth weight to childhood IQ ( Really Long Link ), A Family Aggregation Study: The Influence of Family History and Other Risk Factors on Language Development ( Really Long Link ), The Importance of Rapid Auditory Processing Abilities to Early Language Development: Evidence from Converging Methodologies ( Really Long Link ), Effect of breast feeding on intelligence in children: prospective study, sibling pairs analysis, and meta-analysis ( Really Long Link ).
Oh, and this study ( Really Long Link ) shows that intellectual capability is linked to social class at birth, as well as to birth weight.
Birth weight, now that’s gotta be a mix of genetic and nutritional.
Social class at birth, on the other hand, may be to do with having smarter parents, it may be to do with having better nutrition, but it also has to do with having more money and better-educated parents.
It seems more likely that parents with high intellectual capabilities would be better educated about prenatal care (don’t drink alcohol or smoke) and nutrition (eat a balanced diet to optimise foetal brain development) (Prenatal care comparisons among privately insured, uninsured, and Medicaid-enrolled women: Really Long Link )
No mention of audio devices improving IQ.
If there is a correlation, well, I also find it more likely that rich and well-educated women would a) be more likely to hear about BabyPlus in the first place and b) be more likely to have a spare $200 to pay for it.
But is there anything in the medical literature to show that correlation?
Nope.
BabyPlus claims to be science-based, but on their “The Science Behind BabyPlus” ( Really Long Link ) page, you can find gems such as these:
“Confucius suggests that the fetal environment can determine behavior”
“Plato asserts that vibration is the primary cosmic principle”
“Talmudic writings reference fetal awareness”
and
“Introduction of the portable audiocassette player, the Sony Walkman; parents worldwide begin applying headphones to the maternal abdomen, producing fetal movement and claims for infant benefits”
Confucius, Plato, the Talmud and Sony Walkmans, eh? What exemplary sources! Let's look a bit closer.
Confucius also said ( Really Long Link ) "Woman's greatest duty is to produce a son,” “A woman should look on her husband as if he were Heaven itself, and never weary of thinking how she may yield to him," and “The woman with no talent is the one who has merit."
Shows what Confucius knew about women…and by extension, their foetal environments.
As for Plato, he believed in mating between politicians to “breed a superior race, disposing of inferior or unwanted offspring through infanticide,” ( Really Long Link ) which shows how sensitive he was to the needs of infants.
The Talmud is a religious text, interpreting and discussing God’s laws as applicable to Jews. Obviously BabyPlus and I have a different definition of SCIENCE.
But perhaps there are more religious and moral beliefs underlying BabyPlus than we're being told about.
BabyPlus “research over 25 years” has been carried out by a psychologist called Dr Brent Logan.
At his website ( Really Long Link ), you can buy his book, read an excerpt, or examine the patents which are bringing in the big bucks.
What happens when you click on the “Technical Articles” link?
“The page cannot be found. The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.”
So we can’t read the articles, but when we look at his list of published articles, they have mostly been published in either “International Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Studies” or “Pre and Perinatal Psychology Journal.”
The former is published by the ISPPM, whose mission statement ( Really Long Link ) begins with:
“1. Every child has the right to be respected as an independent person even before birth
2. Every child is entitled to a secure prenatal relationship and bonding
3. Every child has the right to respect for, and protection of, the continuity of its experiences during pregnancy and birth”
Two words (or one, if you permit hyphens).
Anti-abortionists.
The latter journal is published by the APPPAH, and is not peer-reviewed. (Definition of PEER-REVIEWED: Usually said of journals. Peer-reviewed journals only publish articles that have been approved by a panel of experts in a field of study. Some research projects require that you only use peer-reviewed sources.) Though they seem to have plenty of professionals on board, this journal is less about evidence, more about their beliefs:
“We believe that life is a continuum which starts before conception, not at birth…womb ecology eventually becomes world ecology as the seeds of harmony or violence are sown by parents, educators, and caretakers.
APPPAH task forces publish The APPPAH Newsletter and the Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health… and offer training in methods for healing the psychological wounds of pregnancy and birth.”
More thinly-veiled anti-abortionism with a dash of dangerous convictions (attempts to “heal the psychological wounds of birth” have caused deaths in the past, see here: Really Long Link : “Candace Newmaker, 10, died in April 2000 while undergoing what is called "rebirthing" therapy. It's a practice in which a person, after a certain amount of preparation, goes through a re-enactment of birth in order to emotionally bond with a parent. Trained therapists cover the individual in a sheet and hold the person with pillows with enough resistance to make the experience more realistic. In Candace's case, the therapists and their assistants held the girl too tight for too long until she died. Her death has led the state of Colorado to ban the use of "rebirthing" therapies.”
So the “science” behind BabyPlus is about as watertight as a rice paper nappy.
The So-Called Scientific Timeline Of Extreme Dodginess goes on with:
“Media reports about Americans Joseph and Jitsuko Susedik having stimulated their four daughters before birth and throughout childhood during the prior decade with mixed means, all girls demonstrating giftedness.”
Media reports? Great!
Anecdotes? Great!
How do they know their children wouldn’t have been gifted ANYWAY? Every true scientist understands the concept of a control group (from the Free Dictionary: CONTROL, adj. a. To verify or regulate (a scientific experiment) by conducting a parallel experiment or by comparing with another standard.)
That’s why identical twins are so valuable in scientific research, and as soon as you give birth to them, you immediately get swamped with survey paperwork.
If BabyPlus really has been used on 100 000 babies, where is the comprehensive survey with proof of their superior intelligence?
The final insult is this. When someone asks if speech and music can be used instead of Baby Plus, they are told:
“In short, all babies are exposed to speech and music, but these pass by them as white noise, absolutely meaningless - which has been repeatedly verified in independent testing when compared with BabyPlus and a control group.”
Speech certainly does not pass babies by as white noise. Babies can recognise their mother’s voice at birth, and the language spoken while a child is in the womb may make it easier for the baby to learn that particular language.
From the University of Texas ( Really Long Link ):
“Infants preferred their mothers' voices over unfamiliar female voices when presented 500-Hz low-pass filtered voice samples in a nonnutritive sucking operant choice procedure.”
(Intriguing. A non-nutritive sucking operant choice procedure. Sounds like the local nightclub on a Friday.)
From A Model Of Prenatal Acquisition of Speech Parameters: ( Really Long Link ) - note this also contradicts BabyPlus's assertion that the foetus can't hear anything besides the heartbeat:
“The foetus develops in an acoustic-rich environment including the mother’s voice…Adult speakers of English produce aspirated stop-consonants under certain circumstances…(the) prenatal auditory neural network learns…to make phonetic distinctions which his or her mother produces but cannot perceive.”
So don’t sue your mother, after all. Not until BabyPlus does a comprehensive survey of every child exposed to its product, taking into account all external factors such as parental IQ, education, and social class, birth weights, nutrition and exposure to environmental pollutants.
Not what’s expected of Confucius or the Talmud, but it’s what I expect from a product on the market with the words “scientifically proven” on the box.
BabyPlus calls itself on its website ( Really Long Link ),
“An Audio Device That Improves Intellectual Abilities Before Birth.”
“Q: How do the BabyPlus sounds educate my baby?
A: The unborn child receives very little stimulation in the uterus. The only sound that it can clearly discern is the maternal heartbeat. By providing the infant with sounds which closely mimic the maternal heartbeat but which vary in subtly increasing ways, the child's brain learns one of the most basic skills of all - discrimination - before she/he is born”
By that reckoning, women with heart defects producing an irregular heartbeat should have genius children. Women with irritable bowels who fart a lot should have gifted offspring.
(Picture stolen from here: Really Long Link )
It’s funny. I always thought intellectual abilities in children were both inherited from parents and influenced by nutrition (Malnutrition, learning, and intelligence: Really Long Link ), Genetics mediate relation of birth weight to childhood IQ ( Really Long Link ), A Family Aggregation Study: The Influence of Family History and Other Risk Factors on Language Development ( Really Long Link ), The Importance of Rapid Auditory Processing Abilities to Early Language Development: Evidence from Converging Methodologies ( Really Long Link ), Effect of breast feeding on intelligence in children: prospective study, sibling pairs analysis, and meta-analysis ( Really Long Link ).
Oh, and this study ( Really Long Link ) shows that intellectual capability is linked to social class at birth, as well as to birth weight.
Birth weight, now that’s gotta be a mix of genetic and nutritional.
Social class at birth, on the other hand, may be to do with having smarter parents, it may be to do with having better nutrition, but it also has to do with having more money and better-educated parents.
It seems more likely that parents with high intellectual capabilities would be better educated about prenatal care (don’t drink alcohol or smoke) and nutrition (eat a balanced diet to optimise foetal brain development) (Prenatal care comparisons among privately insured, uninsured, and Medicaid-enrolled women: Really Long Link )
No mention of audio devices improving IQ.
If there is a correlation, well, I also find it more likely that rich and well-educated women would a) be more likely to hear about BabyPlus in the first place and b) be more likely to have a spare $200 to pay for it.
But is there anything in the medical literature to show that correlation?
Nope.
BabyPlus claims to be science-based, but on their “The Science Behind BabyPlus” ( Really Long Link ) page, you can find gems such as these:
“Confucius suggests that the fetal environment can determine behavior”
“Plato asserts that vibration is the primary cosmic principle”
“Talmudic writings reference fetal awareness”
and
“Introduction of the portable audiocassette player, the Sony Walkman; parents worldwide begin applying headphones to the maternal abdomen, producing fetal movement and claims for infant benefits”
Confucius, Plato, the Talmud and Sony Walkmans, eh? What exemplary sources! Let's look a bit closer.
Confucius also said ( Really Long Link ) "Woman's greatest duty is to produce a son,” “A woman should look on her husband as if he were Heaven itself, and never weary of thinking how she may yield to him," and “The woman with no talent is the one who has merit."
Shows what Confucius knew about women…and by extension, their foetal environments.
As for Plato, he believed in mating between politicians to “breed a superior race, disposing of inferior or unwanted offspring through infanticide,” ( Really Long Link ) which shows how sensitive he was to the needs of infants.
The Talmud is a religious text, interpreting and discussing God’s laws as applicable to Jews. Obviously BabyPlus and I have a different definition of SCIENCE.
But perhaps there are more religious and moral beliefs underlying BabyPlus than we're being told about.
BabyPlus “research over 25 years” has been carried out by a psychologist called Dr Brent Logan.
At his website ( Really Long Link ), you can buy his book, read an excerpt, or examine the patents which are bringing in the big bucks.
What happens when you click on the “Technical Articles” link?
“The page cannot be found. The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.”
So we can’t read the articles, but when we look at his list of published articles, they have mostly been published in either “International Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Studies” or “Pre and Perinatal Psychology Journal.”
The former is published by the ISPPM, whose mission statement ( Really Long Link ) begins with:
“1. Every child has the right to be respected as an independent person even before birth
2. Every child is entitled to a secure prenatal relationship and bonding
3. Every child has the right to respect for, and protection of, the continuity of its experiences during pregnancy and birth”
Two words (or one, if you permit hyphens).
Anti-abortionists.
The latter journal is published by the APPPAH, and is not peer-reviewed. (Definition of PEER-REVIEWED: Usually said of journals. Peer-reviewed journals only publish articles that have been approved by a panel of experts in a field of study. Some research projects require that you only use peer-reviewed sources.) Though they seem to have plenty of professionals on board, this journal is less about evidence, more about their beliefs:
“We believe that life is a continuum which starts before conception, not at birth…womb ecology eventually becomes world ecology as the seeds of harmony or violence are sown by parents, educators, and caretakers.
APPPAH task forces publish The APPPAH Newsletter and the Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health… and offer training in methods for healing the psychological wounds of pregnancy and birth.”
More thinly-veiled anti-abortionism with a dash of dangerous convictions (attempts to “heal the psychological wounds of birth” have caused deaths in the past, see here: Really Long Link : “Candace Newmaker, 10, died in April 2000 while undergoing what is called "rebirthing" therapy. It's a practice in which a person, after a certain amount of preparation, goes through a re-enactment of birth in order to emotionally bond with a parent. Trained therapists cover the individual in a sheet and hold the person with pillows with enough resistance to make the experience more realistic. In Candace's case, the therapists and their assistants held the girl too tight for too long until she died. Her death has led the state of Colorado to ban the use of "rebirthing" therapies.”
So the “science” behind BabyPlus is about as watertight as a rice paper nappy.
The So-Called Scientific Timeline Of Extreme Dodginess goes on with:
“Media reports about Americans Joseph and Jitsuko Susedik having stimulated their four daughters before birth and throughout childhood during the prior decade with mixed means, all girls demonstrating giftedness.”
Media reports? Great!
Anecdotes? Great!
How do they know their children wouldn’t have been gifted ANYWAY? Every true scientist understands the concept of a control group (from the Free Dictionary: CONTROL, adj. a. To verify or regulate (a scientific experiment) by conducting a parallel experiment or by comparing with another standard.)
That’s why identical twins are so valuable in scientific research, and as soon as you give birth to them, you immediately get swamped with survey paperwork.
If BabyPlus really has been used on 100 000 babies, where is the comprehensive survey with proof of their superior intelligence?
The final insult is this. When someone asks if speech and music can be used instead of Baby Plus, they are told:
“In short, all babies are exposed to speech and music, but these pass by them as white noise, absolutely meaningless - which has been repeatedly verified in independent testing when compared with BabyPlus and a control group.”
Speech certainly does not pass babies by as white noise. Babies can recognise their mother’s voice at birth, and the language spoken while a child is in the womb may make it easier for the baby to learn that particular language.
From the University of Texas ( Really Long Link ):
“Infants preferred their mothers' voices over unfamiliar female voices when presented 500-Hz low-pass filtered voice samples in a nonnutritive sucking operant choice procedure.”
(Intriguing. A non-nutritive sucking operant choice procedure. Sounds like the local nightclub on a Friday.)
From A Model Of Prenatal Acquisition of Speech Parameters: ( Really Long Link ) - note this also contradicts BabyPlus's assertion that the foetus can't hear anything besides the heartbeat:
“The foetus develops in an acoustic-rich environment including the mother’s voice…Adult speakers of English produce aspirated stop-consonants under certain circumstances…(the) prenatal auditory neural network learns…to make phonetic distinctions which his or her mother produces but cannot perceive.”
So don’t sue your mother, after all. Not until BabyPlus does a comprehensive survey of every child exposed to its product, taking into account all external factors such as parental IQ, education, and social class, birth weights, nutrition and exposure to environmental pollutants.
Not what’s expected of Confucius or the Talmud, but it’s what I expect from a product on the market with the words “scientifically proven” on the box.
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