The Baby Bee Bright blight

Last night, while watching a Scrubs rerun, I saw a commercial for a product called Baby Bee Bright. (you can see the commercial here; according to the BBB website, this ad campaign was launched this month). The product allows one to attach a CD player with "fetal speakers" around the abdomen of a pregnant woman, using "an adjustable maternity belt". There is a "fetal microphone" that can be connected to the CD player that transmits sound through speakers that are just inches from the womb. It's very cute. It can be purchased for "4 easy payments of $24.95 plus $6 S&H" (but the fetal microphone is "free"!).

The voiceover during the commercial is very carefully worded: "Research shows cognitive development begins in the womb and Baby Bee Bright gives you everything you need to get started." During the voiceover, the words Increase IQ, Language Skills, and Reading Comprehension (!) float across the screen. Clearly the desired inference in the viewer is that this product will help a fetus develop these skills even before birth. But this is implied and never directly claimed. There are some direct claims. One is "Now you can strengthen [the parent-baby] bond before the baby is born," which is almost tautologically true - there's little doubt the act of talking to one's fetus can enhance feelings of bonding on the part of the parent. It probably works when we talk to plants, photographs, and pets, too. Another stronger claim is that "Studies show babies arrive feeling safer and calmer knowing your voice, dad's voice, even the voice of grandparents." I have no idea if this is true, but the "calmer" part of it certainly strains credulity.

The BBB website is much less circumspect in its claims about this product. The entry page to the site is accompanied by a voiceover that claims that vocabulary and IQ are positively correlated with exposure to words and music while in the womb ("the more [fetuses] hear, the greater their vocabulary and IQ"). The BBB website has a helpful "Research" link. Clicking it reveals the source of this very direct claim, a speech pathologist named Dorothy Dougherty. Dougherty's specialty appears to be helping children (and adults) who have articulation problems. So far as I can establish, she does not do research on prenatal language exposure, nor has she helped any fetuses with their poor articulation. She has, however, written a couple of books about talking to babies (note: not to fetuses; shouldn't the plural be feti?), and likely stands to make some moolah if there's a way to generate an uptick in sales of her books. (Reading the reviews of her books on Amazon.com is a happy thing. Parents are amazed at the way their children acquire language when they follow the tips in Dougherty's book! I think I will write a book that provides tips to parents of their nearly-pubescent children to help their children grow taller, such as the Bobby Brady tested hanging from a chin-up bar technique. Except in cases of dwarfism, it's guaranteed to work. Your child will get taller! I can imagine the testimonials now ... "Mr. Levine's tip to feed my child a nutritious diet works like a charm. Little Julie got 6" taller over the summer. I don't know what we would've done without this book!")

Another testimonial on the BBB website comes from " Dr. Philip De Fina, Director of Neuropsychological Research at the NYU Brain Research Laboratories and faculty member of the NYU School of Medicine," who claimed, "A product like Baby Bee Bright may enhance this early development and subsequently redefine the concept of early intervention. Baby Bee Brightis a brilliant product that may ultimately be linked to improved listening skills and may even impact future reading comprehension abilities."Besides the utter emptiness of this claim, there is the appeal to authority of Dr. De Fina's affiliations. However, he is not currently listed as being on the faculty or staff of the NYU Brain Research Laboratories (and he certainly isn't the director; the co-directors are Drs. E. Roy John and Leslie S. Prichep), nor has he co-authored any of their publications between 2000 and 2006. He is or was affiliated with NYU at some point. The only thing I know for sure is that Dr. De Fina is the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Scientific Officer of the International Brain Research Foundation. The IBRF's goal is to "cure disorders of consciousness," which seems tangential (at best) to what BBB is supposed to be good for.

There are two somewhat more-substantive research-related claims on the BBB website that are allegedly about prenatal learning. One is linked with following label: Study: Parents can help babies get rhythm. The link leads to a press-release-ish description of an experiment by Laurel Trainor, a psychologist at McMaster University. Dr. Trainor is a extremely impressively-published researcher (and I mean wow - these are very good journals), with an ambitious research program. However, none of her research appears to be about prenatal learning.

The second more-substantive research-related claim is based on a press release from the University of Leicester. According to the press release, a study by Dr. Alexandra Lamont demonstrated that babies remember sounds they heard in the womb, and recognize them up to at least age one. The press release is from 2001. Dr. Lamont's current appointment appears to be at the Keele University School of Psychology. Among her "selected publications" there is nothing about the research from the press release. The only reference to this research is to a BBC-produced series called Child of our Time. Unfortunately, without a UK IP address (or some kind of subscription), one cannot view past episodes online. Anyhow, it appears that Dr. Lamont has not (yet?) published this research. Nevertheless, there are studies that show that infants' exposure to external stimuli experienced while they were in the womb has a later influence on their (very simple) behavior (see, for example, the research of Barbara Kisilevsky or Anthony DeCasper), so this is not an outlandish claim. But it does not in any way demonstrate an increased rate of cognitive development of any kind.

The larger issue here is whether parents-to-be should be coughing up $100 to purchase a device that they think will speed up their soon-to-be-born offspring's cognitive development. Every peer-reviewed article I read and skimmed today while putting this together suggests that the jury is still out. No, no, that's too soft a conclusion. The state of the science is this: There's no evidence at all that devices like Baby Bee Bright enhance an infant's development. There's likely no harm at all in buying this sort of thing, if one has cash to burn. But this kind of advertising may induce a sense in some parents-to-be that if they don't buy this kind of gadget, their child will fall behind (Baby Bee Dull). And nothing could be further from the truth.

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