Feathers Ruffled....Baby Plus or Baby Minus

Well, its apparent that I've certainly tapped into a world of people who truly love 'baby plus' and are trying hard to convince me and others that its worth it's while. Now, I'll admit my first review of this product was about an hour of skimming their stated research and website, and after reading two fun comments about how wrong I may be I decided I better do further research...

So, preceding my further thoughts about Baby Plus I figured I should lay out a few things that I thought were fairly implicit about our blog (but clearly are not).

First, this blog was primarily created for family and friends. As you can likely tell by my many grammar and spelling mistakes I don't spend a ton of effort on the posts. They are usually thoughts off the top of my head, experiences, or in this case pocket reviews. These features are intended for family and friends to likely laugh at, or keep tabs on our expectant lives. They are not scientific-peer-reviews that people should be consuming with the fervor of psychinfo articles. Relax.

Second, blogs are opinions. You don't need to defend to me why you like Baby Plus (or anything else; although I love comments from friends and family about suggestions or ideas). To each his, or her, own. As a consumer of research I am critical. Very critical. So, there is a good chance I won't agree, but that's okay. See more below.

Third, if you do really feel the need to defend your own position, fine. However, I don't think that sharing where your degree came from speaks volumes about your ability to consume research, therefore additional information of this sort is rather superfluous to me.


Okay, on to Baby Plus:
So, as a consumer of research the first thing I did was avoid the newspaper articles (Sorry USA Today, but I don't have much faith in you) and all articles published by a babyplus author/owner/investor (this means Dr. Logan; I'm going to gather that you are likely a bit biased) and searched for peer-reviewed journal articles on Medline. Entering the word 'baby plus', I came up with zero articles. Not such good news. But I persisted on. I changed the search terms to 'fetal sonic stimulation' both together and individually since the articles by Dr. Logan feature this keyword often. Another big zero for the sequence. I also tried PsychInfo, as the journal Dr. Logan printed in was Pre and Peri-Natal Psychology. After these attempts I was feeling a bit less than optimistic.
So then I moved on to the actual articles provided at baby plus.
First, the clinical trials article: (the Lazarev study).
Here are the issues I found:
- small sample size (9, 11, and 11 in each group) leading to possible misinterpretation and potential undue influence by outliers (one or two kids that achieved very high or low).
- NOT randomly controlled trial- or at least isn't described as one. This means its very difficult to make claims about causation.
- No reporting of standard error of measurement, measurement techniques (inter-rater reliability)or standard deviations of measurement. These issues indicate that there was no method for determining if Group A (Baby plus) obtained statistically significant differences from Groups B and C. Even though in the summary they say 'statistically significant' values were obtained (how so dear researchers? p value of what? etc.).
- No consideration of confounding variables. What about what child this is for the family? Parents who are having their first child may be more likely to 'spend time working with Baby Plus' curricula than families who already have children, or what about issues like gender, mother's level of education (outside of non-gifted-ness), access to prenatal care, access to proper nutrition, access to prenatal vitamins/urban and rural community support and the list goes on. These thing are all possible confounds that could account for some of the variance attributed here to the Baby Plus intervention.
So all in all I gather that there are correlations here, but its a stretch to say "Baby Plus improves cognitive performance".
Now, I realize the website has a summary of the article published, so maybe some pieces are missing, but if I were the folks at Baby Plus I would definitely put all of the important pieces of the puzzle in a place that can be viewed by the public (i.e. the website).

Then to the USA Today/Science Daily reference. The science daily article is a study about baby response to beats in music. Research indicates that detecting beats in music may be an innate trait. What it does say is esentially, "So it appears that the capability of detecting beat in rhythmic
sound sequences is already functional at birth"
and
"Therefore, although auditory perceptual learning starts already
in the womb (20, 21), our results are fully compatible with the
notion that the perception of beat is innate."
What it doesn't say, anywhere, or even suggest is "teaching babies specific beats will improve cognitive performance." This is a huge leap, and a faulty one at that, without further research.

So, based on this information I'm still not sold. I still don't believe that you will improve cognitive development (as suggested by the CLAM assessment outcomes- which has questionable links to later cognitive development- i.e. predictive validity) in infants by using Baby Plus. I also think the website is very misleading by saying, "BabyPlus children have an intellectual, developmental, creative, and emotional advantage from the time they are born".- Really? Again, back to my original statement- I think more correlation is going on than causation.

So, to all of you out there who think I harped on Baby Plus for no reason- I respond by saying the comments go unfounded and remain your personal opinion. As a consumer of research I understand, clearly, the theoretical background behind babyplus, and I do believe there may be benefits in determining the value of sound to infants in the womb- talking to your baby is a fantastic idea. I do not however, believe that by using this curriculum you can ensure developmental success (as many of the testimonials suggest), which is what baby plus tries to sell. This is the part I dub 'a monstrosity'.

When journals like Child Development, or researchers like Katie Thomas or Phil Zelazo start publishing research on Baby Plus I'll start listening a little more. Until then I still think its a poor choice to improve cognitive performance. There are about 100 other ways to aid in your child's development that can provide them with the critical elements necessary to meet developmental milestones, and I for one, will stick with the robust research on those facets rather than the sporadic research on this one.

So to end the ruffling of the feathers, I say Baby Minus. Just my opinion, as the blog suggests :)