Babies’ Babbling Offers Insight Into Cognitive Ability at Age 30 and Beyond

Cognitive Ability: Watching a baby babble, play and interact provides useful insight into what their cognitive ability might be like decades later, according to new University of Colorado Boulder research published in the journal PNAS.

The study of more than 1,000 twins found that tests as early as 7 months of age can help predict performance on cognitive measures at age 30. It suggests that an infant’s environment plays a significant role in shaping life-long cognition and could even influence risk of dementia later in life.

“Our findings highlight the enduring consequences of the very early childhood environment on cognitive ability and suggest that early life is a critical developmental period that we should be paying attention to,” said lead author Daniel Gustavson, assistant research professor at the Institute for Behavioral Genetics (IBG) at CU Boulder.

Similar to “IQ,” general cognitive ability (GCA) is a single, composite measure of a person’s capacity to learn, reason, understand and problem-solve.

Prior research has shown that if you give an 8-year-old a battery of tests to determine their GCA, their score will look remarkably similar at age 30. And it doesn’t change much between age 11 and 90.

But few scientists have looked to see what signals in infancy can tell us.

Gustavson and senior author Chandra Reynolds, a professor of psychology and neuroscience, looked at data from 1,098 participants in the Colorado Longitudinal Twin Study, which has followed hundreds of twins since 1985.

As early as 7 months old, researchers assessed seven measures of cognition, including vocalization, ability to stay on task, and “novelty preference” — whether the infants preferred to play with new toys over ones they were familiar with.

Age-appropriate cognitive assessments have been done at four additional points, so far.

Looking at scores in infancy could predict about 13% of the variance in scores at age 30. Two measures — novelty preference and task orientation — were the strongest predictors.

“We certainly do not want to imply that cognition is somehow fixed by seven months old,” Gustavson said. “But the idea that a very simple test in infancy can help predict the results of a very complicated cognitive test taken 30 years later is exciting.”

To explore what role genetics vs. environment plays, the study also compared scores between identical twins, who share 100% of their genes, and fraternal twins, who only share half of their genes, and analyzed the twins’ DNA.

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Genes played a big role, with genetic influences measured by age 7 accounting for about half of the variation in scores at age 30.

But environment also had a lasting impact, with 10% of the variability in adult cognitive ability explained by environmental influences before age 2.

“This suggests that even the pre-preschool environment matters,” Gustavson said.

Reynolds says the findings could have implications not only for how youth do in school or how adults perform at work but also how prone they may be to age-related cognitive decline.

“Cognitive aging is a life-long process, not just something that begins in midlife,” she said. “It could be that certain interventions, like strong educational foundations in early life could help maximize what people are capable of and help them keep that cognitive gas in the tank for as long as possible.” Newswise/SP