Sounds crazy right? A study performed by Northwestern University went out to discovery if babies who spent more time in their mothers’ womb resulted in better academic results throughout elementary and grade school. Yes the title is misleading but weight gain correlates with the amount of time the fetus is in the womb.
The study observed and recorded all school records for children that were born in Florida between 1992 and 2002. The study consisted of over 1.3 million children and looked for correlation between the weight of a newborn baby and their cognitive development, and what they discovered was interesting. They determined that babies who tended to weigh more at birth tested higher from third to eighth grade.
What this experiment did well was the large size of participants who were involved. However, there were a few things that I did not like about this article. The article never clarified what weight was considered to be “heavier”. The average weight of a newborn baby is 7.5 pounds. The article kind of leaves us guessing when it comes to how much a heavier baby really weighs. Also, this experiment does not consider the intelligence of the children’s parents. I myself think that there are several third factors that are not taken into account during this experiment. I think though overall, the correlation between the amount of time a fetus spends in the womb and it’s intelligence growing up is a very interesting topic and should be further looked into.
References:
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2014/12/02/heavier-birth-weight-tied-to-better-academic-performance-study-finds/
Interesting topic! I would never assume that there is a correlation between weight at birth and intelligence. I found your post to be very interesting. I researched another study and it showed similar results. The study showed that babies who had rapid weight gain in the first four weeks of birth had an I.Q. 1.5 times higher by the time they reached 6 years old. Now, there was some errors within this study and I do not think it is 100% accurate but I found it interesting that the results correlated with the study that you shared. Maybe there is a link about babies and intelligence.
http://www.care2.com/causes/fat-babies-are-smart-babies-study-says.html
I agree that the time a baby spends in the womb and their academic performance is very interesting. As you said the title is a little misleading and to me it seems that weight is just a confounding variable that is correlated with time in the womb and not necessarily the academic performance. Just like you, I’m curious to know what the weight line was that they used for a heavier baby because that seems like a major part of the experiment. The idea of not knowing the weight of the parents is also very fascinating; whether the baby was born either a little early or right on time and didn’t spend longer in the womb and was just heavier due to genetics when born is a good thought. I would be curious to know whether those babies still performed higher academically or whether they were closer to average. Overall, spending more time in the womb could lend itself to higher cognitive development when born and could essentially give these babies a head start from there average to below average counterparts.