Emily Chan
Among young children, the use of pacifiers is common across different regions all over the world. Up to 85 percent of Western infants use one during any point in their development.
Generally, pacifier usage decreases as children grow older. But some parents allow their babies to continue sucking on the comfort aid long after they should stop.
Be careful not to subject your baby to pacifiers too often! Scientists are warning parents that overexposure to pacifiers can affect the language skills of infants by the time they reach two years of age.
A new study examined 1,187 infants from Oslo, Norway, to explore the link between pacifier usage and speech/language.
The infants were split up into two age groups: 12-month-olds and 24-month-olds. The parents of each child were asked to give in-depth hourly reports of how frequently they were letting their baby soothe themselves with a pacifier.
Across intervals of two months, the team of researchers was able to calculate the total number of hours that a pacifier was in use over the course of childhood, which is known as Lifespan Pacifier Use (LPU).
In addition, parents were asked if their child could recognize Communicative Development Inventories (CDIs), which are lists of words that are common in the vocabularies of each age group. The team found that 24-month-olds were familiar with up to 731 words.
The results of the study showed that children with a higher LPU knew less vocabulary when they reached two years old. Furthermore, they had lower scores in vocabulary comprehension and production. This made them more likely to be in the lower percentile for vocabulary size.
In some cases, the number of hours for pacifier usage for babies with dependent tendencies was lowered. The researchers observed that controlling the number of hours did not lead to changes in vocabulary. Speech constraints were removed, but limitations to development remained steadfast.
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