Mothers often love to talk about what their baby is feeling or thinking in front of them. While this can sometimes look silly to bystanders, it actually has positive effects on several levels, including increasing the baby’s oxytocin, also known as love hormone, levels according to a recent study conducted by University College London (UCL) and published in Science Daily.
Considering that babies can’t communicate their thoughts and feelings with words, their mothers tend to be their “voice.” For example, if a baby shows affection for a certain toy, their mother will say something along the lines: “You like this toy, don’t you?”
This kind of behavior is quite helpful for babies to become familiar with the language and improves their cognitive development. But, as UCL’s study showed, this is just one of the benefits.
UCL’s researchers filmed 62 new mothers, aged between 23 and 44 years old, interacting naturally with their babies, aged between three and nine months old, for a period of five minutes. They later reviewed the footage and measured how accurate the mothers were in verbalizing the way their babies felt. Additionally, they took samples of saliva from babies in order to measure the levels of oxytocin.
Once they compared the two measures, they found “a positive correlation.”
“We have, for the first time, discovered that the amount that a mother talks to their infant about their infant’s thoughts and feelings is directly correlated with their infant’s oxytocin levels. This suggests that oxytocin is involved in regulating children’s early social experience, and this is itself shaped by the way a parent interacts with their infant,” Dr Kate Lindley Baron-Cohen, the lead author of the study, said.
Oxytocin plays a number of important roles in human behavior, including social bonding, love, and maternal behaviors. It is released during labor, breastfeeding, and hugging, among others.