A new study suggests that babies in the womb may be able to remember. This is exciting news, not just in itself. Testing babies on their memory while they are still in the womb may help detect developmental issues as early as possible.
The study was conducted at Maastricht University Medical Center in The Netherlands and published in the journal, Child Development. Fetuses were given a form of stimulation by vibration. At first the babies were startled, but after several introductions of the stimulus, they seemed to ignore it. Furthermore, fetuses tested when they got older seemed to “remember” the stimulus. It took these babies less time to get used to the stimulation compared to fetuses that had never been introduced to it before.
The conclusion is that fetuses, as young as 30 weeks have short term memory. And while the 30-weekers had about 10 minutes of memory, babies tested at 34 weeks could retrieve memory after four weeks.
Fetuses younger than 30 weeks did not show any signs of memory, no matter the length of time.
In more news, baby names are back. Additional research shows that naming your boy an odd name may actually wind him in jail some day. So there is good reason to name your son something traditional and solid, such as Michael or Robert. The more unpopular a name is, the more likely that the boy will grow up to get into trouble.
The research was done by Shippensburg University professor David Kalist and published in Social Science Quarterly. So are you ready for the top boy names that may lead to bad behavior? They are: Alec, Ernest, Garland, Ivan, Kareem, Luke, Malcolm, Preston, Tyrell and Walter.
So what do you do if you have already named your son one of these names and feel that it is too late to change it? You could always call your son by his middle name!
You can read more blog posts by Mary Ann Romans here!
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