Babies’ Sixth Sense

We enter the world with something like the ability to read our mom’s mind: Research shows that babies pick up on subtle signals indicating what their mothers are feeling. “Tone of voice, facial expression—we know that babies are very tuned in to their mother’s emotions,” says Sara Waters, a human development researcher at Washington State University.

To further explore the effect of maternal signals, Waters and her colleagues conducted a study in which they stressed moms out: They made some give a speech about their strengths and weaknesses in front of an intentionally grumpy audience. A separate group of mothers watched relaxing videos instead.

When the mothers reunited with their babies, they brought their experiences with them. Stressed moms and their babies showed signs of sympathetic nervous system activity that correlated more strongly than those of relaxed moms and their offspring. The correlation grew stronger over time when stressed moms were allowed to hold their babies upon reunion, but not when they remained separate—evidence that touch plays a key part in mothers’ transmission of stress signals.