Getting Inside the Complex Mind of a Baby, Part 3

VOICE ONE: A long-term American study shows the effect of early education on future learning abilities. The study followed more than one thousand three hundred children from birth through the ages of ten or eleven. It found that children who received higher quality care before starting school had better language skills by those ages than children who had lower quality care. The study is known as the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development. It is said to be the largest, longest lasting and most complete study of child care in the United States. VOICE TWO: The children included in the study were born around nineteen ninety-one in ten areas of the country. Researchers examined the quality and amount of child care the children received until they were four and one-half years old. Child care included any care provided by people other than the child's mother that lasted at least ten hours a week. This included any care given by fathers or other family members. The researchers then examined each child's performance in school and social development. They also measured other influences, such as the quality of classroom education and parenting. VOICE ONE: The researchers examined whether the developmental qualities that had been observed in young children were still present a few years later. They found that the older children who had received higher quality child care continued to show better ability in tests of language skills. Researchers tested the children's ability to name objects shown in a series of pictures. The study confirmed that a link between high quality child care and better test results continued as the children grew older. It also found that the children's ability was not dependent on the amount of time they had spent in child care. VOICE TWO: New studies looking into different influences on babies' intelligence are published each year. One such report was published earlier this year in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers found that women's use of a medicine to treat the disease epilepsy during pregnancy may cause lowered intelligence in their children. Intelligence tests at age three showed up to a nine point difference in the children of mothers who took the drug valproate. As a result, the researchers suggest women of childbearing age should use other medicines for epilepsy. VOICE ONE: This SCIENCE IN THE NEWS was written and produced by Brianna Blake. I'm Fritzi Bodenheimer. VOICE TWO: And I'm Bob Doughty. You can find transcripts, MP3s and podcasts of our programs at voaspecialenglish.com. Join us again next week for more news about science in Special English on the Voice of America. Source: Voice of America