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    英国一项研究表明，婴儿一岁时头颅的发育情况可以预测他/她的智力。

    英国南安普顿大学的研究者说，虽然他们不知道一些婴儿的脑容量较大的确切原因，但是一岁时儿童脑容量的大小有助于确定其以后的智力水平。

    南安普顿大学的公共卫生学博士Catherine Gale认为：大脑的生长发育，尤其时婴儿期大脑的生长发育可能是产生上述差别的一个原因。Gale 和她的团队在《Avon 河父母和儿童的纵向调查》中对633个足月产婴儿进行研究，分别测量孩子在出生时、一岁、四岁和八岁时的头围。在孩子四岁时进行韦克斯勒学前儿童和小学生智力量表测试，八岁时进行韦克斯勒智力量表测试，结果发现头围最大的儿童组智商也最高。

    研究者指出：婴儿期以后的大脑生长，至少是脑容量的增长，不可能弥补其在一岁前大脑生长的不足。

    研究者还调查了孩子的父母，要求母亲完成一份关于育儿方式、年长孩子情况以及母乳喂养和产后抑郁等一些问题的调查表，由此每个母亲都得到一个育儿分值。结果发现，父母受教育程度高、婴儿母乳喂养三个月以上，母亲在育儿问卷调查中得分高的儿童趋向于获得较高的IQ得分。 调整各种相关因素后，婴儿一岁时的大脑发育仍与其四岁和八岁时的IQ得分相关。

    研究者们说，他们的这项发现为婴儿期是出生后大脑发育最重要时期且决定以后智力水平的结论再添一证据。

Babies with big heads smarter by age eight
Child Health News
Published: Monday, 16-Oct-2006
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According to researchers in the UK, how much a child's head grows by the time he or she reaches age one may be an indication of a child's intelligence.

The researchers from the University of Southampton, in England say although they do not know exactly what causes some babies to have bigger brains than others, the brain volume a child achieves by the age of one year helps determine later intelligence.

Lead author Catherine Gale, PhD, of the University of Southampton says head growth, especially in infancy may be one of those factors.

Gale and her team studied 633 full-term British babies from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.

They measured with a tape measure the babies' head circumference at birth, one year, four years, and eight years.

The children were given Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence at the age 4 years old and the Wechsler Intelligence test at 8 years of age and it was found that those with the biggest heads achieved the highest IQ scores.

The researchers suggest that brain growth after infancy, at least in terms of brain volume, is unlikely to compensate for poor growth in the first year of life and did not seem to be as significant.

For the study the researchers also studied the babies' parents; mothers were asked to complete surveys about their parenting style, their older children, and other factors such as breastfeeding and postpartum depression and each mother was given a parenting score based on the survey results.

It was found that babies tended to have higher IQ scores if their parents had more education, had been breastfed for three or more months, and had mothers with high scores on the parenting questionnaire.

This remained the case even after adjustments were made for all those factors, and babies' head growth by age 1 remained tied to IQ scores among the 4- and 8-year-olds.

The researchers say that their findings provide 'additional evidence that infancy is the most important period of postnatal brain growth for determining later intelligence'.

They conclude that the brain volume a child achieves by the age of one year helps determine later intelligence.
Growth in brain volume after infancy may not, they say, compensate for poorer earlier growth.


编辑：蓝色幻想