Breastfeeding and cognitive development in 4-month-old children

Breastfeeding has important benefits for physical and cognitive growth. It strengthens the infant’s immune system and contributes to the development of the brain. Some studies (e.g. Cai et al. 2015) showed that breastfeeding has been associated also to better intellectual performance. However, limited research has examined the benefits in infants under one year of age. This research investigated the cognitive development of 90 four-month-old infants, gathering information about the type of milk feeding (breastfeeding vs. bottle feeding), the frequency of milk feeds and the overall duration of breastfeeding in months. Control variables as infants’ temperament and social and demographic status were considered. For the assessment of the cognitive development, we employed standard measures as the Developmental ProfileTM-3 (Alpern 2007). Analyses are currently in progress, but we expect that DP3 scores reveal a better performance of breastfed- vs. bottle-fed children, already at 4 months of age.