Dummies may 'stunt baby boys' emotional development'

Using dummies prevents babies from mimicking facial expressions, psychologists say.

They are recommended to reduce the risk of infant cot death – but now parents have yet another dilemma to deal with as scientists claim “dummies may stunt baby boys’ emotional development”. According to new research by American psychologists, heavy use of pacifiers in infancy can be linked to poor emotional maturity later. The study, published today, suggests that dummies prevent babies from mimicking the expressions of the people around them – a vital learning tool.

Surprisingly, there were only found to be ill effects among young boys and not young girls, with six and seven-year-old boys who spent more time with dummies in their mouths as babies “less likely to mimic the emotional expressions of faces peering out from a video”. Meanwhile college-aged men who reported heavy pacifier use as infants scored lower than their peers in empathy tests.

Psychology professor and lead author of the study Paula Niedenthal said the gender difference could be because girls develop earlier, or boys are simply more vulnerable than girls and so disrupting their use of facial mimicry is more detrimental for them. She said the study had important implications for the continued use of dummies. Despite cot death charities’ advice that dummy use can lower the risk of so-called Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, the World Health Organisation and American Academy of Paediatrics already call for “limited” pacifier use to help promote breastfeeding and because of links to ear infections and dental abnormalities.

Prof Niedenthal, who carried out the research for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said: "By reflecting what another person is doing, you create some part of the feeling yourself. "That's one of the ways we understand what someone is feeling -- especially if they seem angry, but they're saying they're not; or they're smiling, but the context isn't right for happiness."

Mimicry is an important tool for babies, she added: "We can talk to infants, but at least initially they aren't going to understand what the words mean. So the way we communicate with infants at first are by using the tone of our voice and our facial expressions." She said the effect was similar to that seen in studies of patients receiving Botox injections – where users experience a narrower range of emotions and often have trouble identifying the emotions behind expressions on other faces. Added Niedenthal: "That work got us thinking about critical periods of emotional development, like infancy.

“What if you always had something in your mouth that prevented you from mimicking and resonating with the facial expression of somebody?" She said another reason for the girl-boy divide could be that parents are more likely to encourage being “emotional” in girls: "Since girls are not expected to be unemotional, they're stimulated in other ways. But because boys are desired to be unemotional, when you plug them up with a pacifier, you don't do anything to compensate and help them learn about emotions."

She conceded the study would prove controversial: "Parents hate to have this discussion. They take the results very personally. Now, these are suggestive results, and they should be taken seriously. But more work needs to be done." She said it was important to discover next “how much [dummy use] is bad and when?" adding: "We already know from this work that nighttime pacifier use doesn't make a difference, presumably because that isn't a time when babies are observing and mimicking our facial expressions anyway. It's not learning time."

But for now she said she would advise parents to be cautious of using the dummy too often: "I'd just be aware of inhibiting any of the body's emotional representational systems."

Yahoo Lifestyle