Boost Your Response Time by Listening to a Baby Cry
From the archive. This post was first published on the original Green Eggs and Moms blog and is kept here as it was.
Ahh. Finally, peace and quite. Your baby is napping and you get to do the same.
Slowly you drift into sweet slumber and then you hear, “WAAH, WAAH!”
Yup, your angel is up again and she’s causing a ruckus. You open your eyes and zip to her like a bee on steroids. (Has anyone really seen a bee on steroids?)
Ever wonder why you have super fast reflexes the minute you hear your baby cry? Here’s what a study found.
The Study
Researchers from Oxford University worked with 40 volunteers to gauge their response time after playing the popular arcade game whack-a-mole.
Prior to whacking the moles, the volunteers were asked to listen to different sounds: crying of babies, twittering of birds and distressed adults.
The Findings
The study showed that faster response times were recorded after participants listened to the sound of crying babies.
Morten Kringelbach from Oxford’s psychiatry department says that this may be an evolutionary response so parents can protect their offspring.
So what?
Here’s a scenario from the stone age: You leave the baby in front of your cave to quickly grab a glistening apple from the tree. Half-way through the climb your offspring begins to cry.
Thanks to an improved response time, you zip to your child in time to ward-off the hungry coyote.
Without this instinctive response, more children would have been tasty treats for starving animals.
Nowadays there aren’t many wild animals stalking for prey in the city. However babies still cry for mostly the same reasons: hunger, boredom, unwell feeling or just because they want to.
Parents respond to these distress calls as a way to ensure the survival of the species.
Good to know, right?
So, anyone up for a game of whack-a-mole to test your new-found super mom reflexes?
Photo Creative Commons:Flash – mondi
Cave woman – s.jaspert