Stress in babies: study participants wanted
In our modern and increasingly digitized society, stress is part of everyday life for most of us. The ongoing CoV crisis, including lockdowns, exit and contact restrictions, has also increased the stress level. Numerous studies have shown this very clearly. There are already studies that show that stress has a negative effect on the development of unborn children. A research team from the University of Salzburg headed by the psychologist Manuel Schabus will specifically look at the effects on the language development of the youngest.
Does Stress Affect Babies’ Learning Ability?
“What we are particularly interested in is how language development takes place in the first weeks and months of life. In other words, what can children learn before they are born, what can they already do at birth and how quickly does language develop there? Depending on how stressed you were before the birth ”, says the psychologist Manuel Schabus.
Babies are played learning rhymes
For this purpose, learning rhymes are played to the unborn in the stomach. Because babies can already remember such linguistic stimuli for up to four weeks from the 34th week of pregnancy.
“We start in the 34th week of pregnancy and give the babies practical baby rhymes, see how they learn to die, and immediately after the birth – at two weeks, then after a few months, six months and one and a half years – we test the brains of the Babies using electroencephalography (EEG). We test experiences and also look at the functionality of the babies, whether they have more language development, and whether they can do more if they have a healthy development, ”says Schabus.
Stress can be measured by the cortisol content in hair
The families must plan a total of four home visits by the researchers. The brainwaves of the babies are measured. However, more data is needed to measure the actual stress babies have had. “Stress testing babies is not that trivial. We can’t ask them how we do it with the mothers. To do this, we take hair samples and can then calculate back a few months how much cortisol and how much stress hormone the baby had. And that from before birth up to the age of one and a half years,” says the psychologist from the University of Salzburg.
Unique research project
“This is really, I think, one of the first studies in the world to start measuring brain data two weeks after birth. Originally, the study was simply intended as a stress study. So we thought we’d look at mothers who are less and more stressed and how that plays out. We now have a global stressor and that is the pandemic and the pandemic measures. The question is: how do the parents deal with it? And what do we see in the children’s development as a result? It is not a CoV study, but of course CoV is a stress factor that is sure to resonate with many babies, ”says the psychologist, who has already led CoV studies in the narrower sense. Most recently, for example, on the psychological consequences of the coronavirus pandemic on children and adolescents. More about it here.
Interested parties can register by email
Parents are compensated for participating in the baby study with evaluations of all developmental diagnostic procedures, and information about “the stress experience is certainly also exciting feedback,” says Schabus. In addition, the parents are entitled to an expense allowance of 300 euros and a music box for the babies. The researchers are looking for a total of 60 expectant mothers for the three-year study. Interested parties can inform themselves and register by sending an email to [email protected].