Talking to premature babies tied to later development

By Andrew M. Seaman NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Babies born prematurely may benefit from people talking to them while they are still in the hospital’s intensive care unit, suggests a new study. Researchers found that premature babies who were exposed to more talking from adults, such as their parents, in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), tended to score higher on development tests later on. “This is certainly a remarkable, easy-to-implement and cost-effective intervention of informing moms of visiting their children in the intensive care unit,” Dr. Betty Vohr said. Vohr is the study’s senior author from the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and Women and Infants Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island.