Two separate lines of my research with infants have recently merged in their implications for the meaning of smiling and cooing in early infancy. One line began as a study of the development of the perception of object orientation, and the other began as a study of early instrumental learning. Recently, data from these two research directions have suggested what might be called an ethological-social cognitive hypothesis concerning the onset of vigorous smiling and cooing in early infancy. This hypothesis is less simple than one might desire, but those who would focus on the limited parsimony rather than the presumed heuristic and explanatory breadth of this hypothesis will at least be pleased that it has been given a short name, The Game.
Confusion about left and right is one of those psychological facts about childhood that parents and teachers confirm in their day-to-day dealings with children. Hebb (1949) commented on .. the notorious difficulty of choosing between left and right, to be observed by any one who tries to teach twelve-year-old children to 'right turn* promptly on command [p. 118]Teachers of reading can testify to the begin ning reader's difficulties in distinguishing left from right. The litera ture on left-right confusion in the discrimination of letters begins with Davidson's (1935) classic study of p, b, d, and q and continues to the present day. Piaget offered one of the most influential explanations of left-right confusion in his 1928 monograph Judgment and Reasoning in the Child. The child's problem, Piaget asserted, is 'logical'; that is, it is a problem in understanding a relation. Piaget argued that .. childish realism, i.e., the inability to grasp the relativity of notions or ideas, is one of the principal obstacles to the growth of the child's reasoning ability [p. 96]. He equated the child's growing appreciation of left right directionality with his growing ability to place himself the point of view of others with regard to left and right [p. 109], that is, with the lessening of his ego-centrism. In support of his thesis, Piaget reported tests with 200 children between four and twelve years of age. He asked each child six multi part questions about left and right relations. The questions were scaled in terms of difficulty: The first four questions tested in various ways the child's knowledge of his own left and right hands and legs, the left and right hands and legs of the E, and the left and right sides of a two-object array. For questions 5 and 6, three-object arrays were employed. The child sat opposite a row of three objects: a pencil at the left, a key in the middle, and a coin at the right. (Because in the
When a consistently follows an individual's reponse, the situation is set for instrumental learning. If the is rewarding and the individual is capable of learning, the response should become more frequent. Thus, the traditional learning analysis would ask whether the response is affected by the situation (e.g., does the re sponse become more frequent, stronger, etc.). In this paper, we shall ask this standard learning question in an analysis of the effectiveness of a special learning situation which was arranged for young infants. As a consequence of an unexpected reaction to this learning situation, however, we shall also consider the question of whether for the hu man infant the response-contingent is affected by its occur rence in early instrumental learning situations. In the concluding portion of this paper we will propose that the very likely is affected in that it appears to acquire the functional meaning of a social stimulus for the human infant. The data we will discuss are from a short-term longitudinal study conducted at the Institute of Human Development. The study involved presenting two weeks of a special contingency experience to infants between their eighth and tenth weeks of life. Some previous research suggested that the human infant, under conditions, might be undergoing a deprivation of opportunity to engage in and adapt to contingency experiences. The combination of his short memory and the long recovery periods of his naturally effective motor responses could prohibit his becoming aware of otherwise manageable contin gencies in his world. Prohibiting the exercise of the available capacity for processing contingency information could deprive the infant of a formative intellective experience. It has been hypothesized that this natural deprivation period might exist for much of the first three months of life (Watson, 1966a, 1967).
As an outcome of a study undertaken some years ago in Uganda, a number of behavior patterns were identified, through which it was proposed, an infant becomes attached to his mother, and which, when taken together, may serve as criteria for judging that an attachment has been formed (Ainsworth, 1963, 1964, 1967). A second study of the development of infant-mother attachment was then instituted, using a sample of white, middle-class American babies, one of the purposes of which was to trace in detail the development of these patterns of attachment behavior throughout the first year of life. This present report deals with some of the findings of this study in regard to the following: crying; response to brief everyday separations from the mother and to her return afterwards; and behavior relevant to physical contact with her. Attachment behavior has been defined as behavior that promotes contact and/or proximity of an infant to his mother figure (Bowlby, 1958; 1969; Ainsworth & Bell, 1970). Crying is classed as an attach ment behavior because it provides a signal that is likely to bring an infant's mother into proximity or contact with him. The conditions that activate crying are varied—including at first hunger, pain, cold, and probably also being out of contact with companions. Although the conditions of its termination are also various, evidence has accumu lated that crying is often effectively terminated by caretaker behaviors involving close physical contact. (See reviews by Bowlby, 1969; Ain
On the basis of a number of longitudinal studies of early cognitive development, there is a good deal of evidence for discontinuity between sensorimotor and verbal intelligence. This is reflected in the generally low correlations between performance on infant tests, which largely tap perceptual-motor skills, and later measures of intelligence, which de pend more on language (Bayley, 1955; Bloom, 1965; Golden, Birns, Bridger, & Moss, in press, 1971). While there may be very little relationship between perceptual-motor skills in infancy and later problem-solving ability, there may be conti nuity in terms of certain personality traits which are related to both pre verbal and verbal intelligence. Such personality traits, already present in infancy, may provide a missing link between the sensorimotor and verbal periods. When used in combination with infant tests, such meas ures may substantially increase our ability to predict later intelligence. In the Fels study (1958), Sontag, Backer, and Nelson have demon strated the value of using personality measures to predict changes in intellectual performance in older school-age children. Therefore, it seems worthwhile to see whether certain personality traits which may be ob served in infants can be used to predict their later cognitive develop
Infancy is the most malleable, rapidly changing, and least organ ized period of human development. Never again will there be the same potential for establishing basic forms of understanding, style, and feeling in all domains of experience. Early experience is the primary matrix from which all of later development is generated. This is the concept that governed the design of our program of total care and education for infants. All of the child's relations with the physical and social environment were the subject of attention. The program followed a developmental learning approach: the methods of care and stimulation were developmentally adapted and sequenced to the processes and understandings of the age period. The investigation was a three year joint effort between a research group of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education and the teach ing staff and student teachers of Canadian Mothercraft Society, based on program guides written by the principal investigator (Fowler, 1968a, 1968b, 1969). The program was set in the day care facilities (an old mansion) of Canadian Mothercraft in Toronto. There was accommodation for around thirty babies for all-day care, encompass ing spacious and well-equipped playrooms (for both fine and gross perceptual-motor activities); sleeping, eating, and toileting facilities; kitchen and dining facilities for adults; infant diet kitchen, office
In recent years, one of the most frequently discussed topics in the field of infant research is the issue of the infant's state as it af fects his behavior and his responses. Most often, the infant's state is viewed as an obstacle, an interference, or a downright nuisance which, unless controlled for, stands in the way of making reliable observations and of understanding the infant's responses. Less fre quently, state is discussed as a variable in its own right or as a neces sary precondition for stimulation to be effective. In this paper, I will attempt to discuss separately the different contexts in which the con cept of state is used—at the risk, perhaps, of artificially separating issues which overlap to some extent. In discussing and illustrating the contextual differences in which state is used, I shall draw, as I was asked to do, mostly on examples from my own research with newborns. On occasion, I shall also provide illustrations from the research of other investigators. When in our work with newborns we speak of the infants' states, we refer to Peter Wolff's (1966) classification of states. We use his behavioral criteria for determining state with only very minor modifi cations. Wolff's state definitions correspond very closely to those de scribed by Prechtl (1964) and his group of developmental neurologists in Groningen. Prechtl, in his highly sophisticated work with neonates, probably was the first to stress the overriding and critical importance of considering state in evaluating any response on the part of the new born. Other investigators have devised slightly different classifications of the infants' states. Among these are Brazelton's (1970); Janet Brown's (1964); Weiler and Bell's (1965); and, most recently, Bois mier's and his collaborators' (1970) classifications. When one com pares these different schemes, it is striking that the overlap of criteria far exceeds the differences. This suggests that, even though we are dealing with only a concept called state as opposed to a concrete entity, there is substantive agreement regarding the criteria of state which are useful in understanding an infant's behavior at any given point in time.
A recent article by Cohler, Grunebaum, Weiss, and Moran (1971) reports on intergenerational differences in childcare attitudes, the data coming from the mothers and grandmothers of five-year-old children. interpretation of the differences in attitudes that were found is not entirely clear from the paper, but some recent analyses of retrospective reports show rather clearly that the data from the grandmothers should not be assumed to be measures of the childcare attitudes they held when their own children were five-year-olds. Though Cohler et al. do not strongly advocate this assumption and even note the influence of current value norms on attitudes, this interpretation is unfortunately very likely to be made by the reader who is seeking empirical evidence for changes in childrearing over time. purpose of this note is to caution against this interpretation which is considered unwarranted. problem stems from the framework in which the research is placed: The present study concerns the relationship between the child care attitudes of mothers and their own mothers, the changes in child care attitudes from one generation to the next, and differences in childcare attitudes among mothers and grandmothers sharing a common residence or living apart [p. 3]. Though perhaps unintended by the author, the implication here is that the findings relate to actual changes in childcare attitudes between the generations. Recent research clearly indicates that attitudes regarding child rear ing significantly change in retrospect (Yarrow, Campbell, & Burton, 1970). In this study mothers were asked to recall their childrearing prac tices and relationship with their children, and certain personality char acteristics of their children, the length of recall varying from three to 30 years. Regardless of length of time involved in the recall, the data strongly demonstrated systematic shifts in the retrospective reports over all categories of information that were covered. Furthermore, differential magnitude of correspondence (though not overwhelmingly significant
One outgrowth of the phenomenal increase in infant research during the last few years is a growing corpus of data to validate the proposition that smiling and vocalizing have predictable cognitive correlates. A cognitive view was not championed or tested prior to this rebirth, even though in the case of smiling Piaget suggested a relation 35 years ago. In his earlier writings he postulated that smil ing reflects recognitory assimilation (Piaget, 1952, p. 72), but later referred to smiling as a reflection of cognitive mastery (Piaget, 1951, p. 90). Both hypotheses are closely related and lead to similar spe cific testable deductions. The cognitive conception of smiling and vocalizing has led to unique predictions that have been generally confirmed. Many of these hypotheses probably would not have been formulated from either of the two dominant theories—the social learning or ethological view points—although the results seem to be compatible with both views. One important assumption made by the cognitiviste is that the mech anisms and principles governing infant responses are identical for both social and nonsocial situations. One methodological implication is that controlled observations with strange and familiar adults in natural settings can be used as a starting point for research followed by more systematic testing with nonsocial stimuli in laboratory and home settings. SMILING
Few developmental phenomena enjoy the universality, inevitabil ity, and temporal determinancy of the infant smile—features that beguile the layman and bedevil the experimenter. In attempting to account for the various factors that control smiling and the it plays in human behavior, we face immediately the communication vs. expression issue, the question of whether to emphasize the effect of smiling on outsiders or the meaning of smiling for the insider, a simple point often overlooked or confused in the literature. Consider first the adult smile. As an outsider, we interpret the smile of another person (leaving aside the rare nervous smile) to mean simply that he has experienced a positive change in feeling. It may be because he is happy to see us, because he has appreciated a twist of humor, because he has mastered a problem, and so on. The social role of the smile here is to communicate to others something about the in feeling of the smiler. To the insider, if my introspections have any validity, the outsider's perceptions are fairly veridical. Treatments of infant smiling have traditionally weighed heavily the external aspects of smiling, one of which is the effect of infant smiling on others. Bowlby (1969) has rightly pointed out the value of smiling for the attachment of mother to infant. I would claim, inci dentally, that this virtue is not unique to the infant; people tend throughout life to be attracted to smilers no matter what their age. Another effect of the infant smile is to signal others that they are doing something right; mothers, fathers, and siblings will perform any number of antics to maintain the infant smile. A second ex ternal aspect of smiling has interested investigators. Smiling has frequently been treated relatively mechanically as either a triggered response, in the ethological tradition, to eyes, to faces, to voices, to jouncing or, in the operant tradition, as a response to be reinforced or extinguished. Amazingly enough, little has been said about what the smile
ABSTRACT In the present study approximately 15 boy and 15 girl infants, Caucasian and from a lower socioeconomic background, were seen in a free play situation exactly replicating the Goldberg and Lewis (1969) study. Social class and sex differences were explored in attachment behavior to mother and play behavior. Social class differences in vocalization were observed which suggested that the linguistic deficiency usually reported for the lower class is visible by one year of age. Sex differences in attachment behavior were again observed and indicated that across different social classes one‐year‐old girls show more attachment behavior than boys.
Several new approaches toward the study of first language ac quisition have been developed during the last two decades. Chomsky (1957) formulated the principles of generative grammar, while the experimental analysis of language performance was enriched through new methods by Berko (1958). The closer integration of cognitive psychology and language development dates back to Piaget (1926) and Vygotsky (1962).1 Their work and the most recent summary of the field by McNeil (1970a) led to important new insights into the probable principles of language learning. Extensive data collections of child language were made by Brown and Bellugi (1964), Miller and Ervin (1964), Weir (1962), and many others. All investigators agree that most, if not all, of language development is based upon learning by the child from adult models. Authors like Lenneberg (1964) or McNeil (1970b) are prone to posit some inborn universal principles as a basis for the acquisition of language. Yet they still accept, that the specific language acquired by the individual child has to be derived by learning from the child's environment. There exist, however, only few studies of the specific interactions between the adult and the child, which lead to language acquisition. Imitation through expansion by the parent and imitation through reduction by the child were described by Brown and Bellugi (1964). Cazden (1965) studied the respective effectiveness of imitation through expansion and modeling in an experimental setting. Whereas the previous au thors concentrated only upon language interactions. Bloom (1968) also used nonlinguistic information from the situational and be havioral context to analyze the development of language skills and Cazden (1970) stresses in her recent survey the situational impact on language behavior. Only a small percentage of all verbal interac tions between the adult and the child can be categorized under the hitherto established principles as even a cursory survey of transcribed protocols proves. More intensive studies of child-mother interaction seem, therefore, indispensable. The primary purpose of the present investigation is to concentrate on these interactions between the adult and the child. Besides verbal interaction, nonverbal aspects of the situation are included in the
