Staff Reports
(STUDY FINDS) – According to the findings of a recent study, infants who would be breastfed for an extended period of time have a higher IQ than children who are not breastfed. Researchers from the University of Oxford discovered that children whose moms fed them formula instead of breastfeeding for a longer period of time performed worse on intelligence tests than babies whose mothers breastfed them for a longer period of time.
The team’s findings, which were eventually published in the journal PLOS One, did not change at all after they took into account the cognitive abilities of the parents. Previous studies have shown that babies who are breastfed are more likely to be intelligent, but the researchers weren’t sure whether the association was purely related to a parent’s decision to breastfeed or not.
Over 7,000 babies who were born throughout 2000 and 2002 were followed by researchers from Oxford until they reached the age of 14 for the purpose of the new study. The information gathered by the researchers included the length of time for any nursing, the length of time for exclusive breastfeeding, verbal cognitive scores at the ages of 5, 7, 11, and 14, and spatial cognitive scores at the ages of five, seven, and 11. The authors of the study also put each mother’s socioeconomic status as well as her cognitive abilities to the test by giving her a vocabulary quiz.
The preceding is a summary of an article that originally appeared on WND.
