Parents may sometimes find it difficult to focus on their daily tasks when they hear the constant cries of their baby. However, a new study suggests that the brain is capable of making necessary adjustments to help people deal with the strain of the cries and complete what they need to do.
David Haley, a psychology professor from the University of Toronto, led a team of researchers in finding out how a baby's cry can affect their parents' way of thinking.
"Parental instinct appears to be hardwired, yet no one talks about how this instinct might include cognition," Haley pointed out.
For their experiment, Haley and his colleagues asked people to undergo a test where they needed to identify the color of a printed word as quickly as they could without focusing on the word's meaning itself.
While the participants were completing the task, they were exposed to audio clips of a baby crying or laughing. The researchers then measured their brain activity through the use of electroencephalography (EEG) every time the audio clip of the baby's vocalization was played to them.
The team discovered that the participants' focus on the task was reduced whenever they heard the baby's cry. The sound also caused their brains to process cognitive conflict more than when they heard the baby's laughter.
Haley explained that a person's ability to process cognitive conflict is important as it determines their attention. This is considered to be a key executive function needed to make decisions or to complete certain tasks.
Lead author Joanna Dudek said that parents often have to make a variety of decisions and deal with competing demands for their attention every day.
She said that they could be busy doing one chore when suddenly their doorbell rings and their baby begins to cry. How are they able to keep their composure? How do they know when to stop what they were doing and take care of their child?
Despite causing aversion in many adults, hearing a baby's cry can also trigger an adaptive response, Haley said. It could cause parents to "switch on" their cognitive control so that they could respond to the emotional needs of their child effectively while simultaneously addressing some of the other demands in their daily lives.
Haley said that if a baby's cry triggers cognitive conflict in their parents' brain, it could train parents how to focus their attention more selectively as well.
The findings of the study are featured in the journal PLOS ONE.
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