Study: Breast-Feeding Raises Verbal IQ
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Increased breast-feeding during the first months of life appears to raise a child’s verbal IQ, according to a study of nearly 14,000 children released yesterday. The study in Archives of General Psychiatry found that 6-year-olds whose mothers were part of a program that encouraged them to breast-feed had a verbal IQ that was 7.5 points higher that children in a control group.
The researchers said their findings suggested that the longer an infant is fed exclusively breast milk, the greater the IQ improvement. The results echo smaller previous studies that found children and adults who were breast-fed tend to have higher IQs than whose who were not. The lead author, Dr. Michael Kramer, said the improvements were modest and might not be noticeable on an individual basis.
