Communication, The Umwelt,
and Human Infant Crying
PSC 113
Jeff Schank
Outline
• The Umwelt Again
• An assessment/management (A/M) approach
– Management capitalizes on the assessment systems of targets
– Communication involves mutual efforts to regulate one
another’s behavior
– Communication is based on an organism’s Umwelt
• Human infant crying
– Attachment
– Crying is designed to capitalize on motivational and emotional
systems of caregivers
– What about colic?
– The evolutionary origins of crying
Questions about Crying
• Is crying referentially specific?
• Is crying a true indicator of specific needs
(internal states) of the infant?
• What effects does crying have on caregivers or
potential care givers?
• Can crying malfunction?
• How has evolution shaped crying and adult
responses to crying?
Umwelt Again
• We just talked about the perceptive-reactive
world of animals
• Different species have different Umwelten, but as
we saw, the perceptive-reactive worlds of
organisms change as they develop
• Humans are not born with language and so an
infant cannot “tell” a caregiver what it specifically
needs
• If infants cannot communicate their specific
needs, then their needs have to be assessed by
caregivers
Assessment/Management (A/M)
• Don Owings proposed a conceptual framework for
theorizing about infant crying as a form of animal
communication
• He called his approach the assessment/management (A/M)
approach
• On the A/M approach, communication is an inter-individual
process built upon two types of individual activity
– Assessment: self-interested behaviors based on the extraction
of clues from other individuals and their contexts
– Management: self-interested efforts to maintain or change
current circumstances, in part, by managing the behavior of
others
A/M Examples
• This fits with the view that communication is at a
higher level of organization than the individual
• Individuals do not have to belong to the same
species
The Management Side
• Management capitalizes on the assessment
systems of targets
• That is, one individual can manipulate the
behavior of another by emitting signals that take
advantage of the way the target assesses those
signals
– Signaling (crying) works by capitalizing on the
assessment systems of targets (caregivers)
– The assessment systems of targets (caregivers) are
major determinants of the effectiveness of signaling
(crying) at eliciting care giving
Signal Examples
Communication as Mutual Regulation
of Behavior
• Communication on the A/M approach is a
system and it can malfunction (e.g., laughing
gulls)
• Evolutionary changes in the A/M system of
one type of individual can affect the A/M
system of another
• Is the interaction between predators or
parasites and fall webworms communication?
Communication is Based on an
Organism’s Umwelt
• This may create asymmetries in communication
• In this case, assessment by the caregiver is weak but
management by the infants dramatically affects the
caregiver’s assessment systems
Umwelt, Attachment, and Crying
• The notion of attachment comes from early animal
behavior research of Konrad Lorenz on imprinting and
presupposes the idea of the Umwelt
Umwelt, Attachment, and Crying
• Similarly, human infants attach to caregivers
among the many objects in their Umwelt
Attachment and The Strange Situation
• On the A/M approach, either assessment or
management issues with the caregiver may explain the
insecure attachment relationship
• This is the new component that A/M adds to
attachment theory
Secure Attachment
• When an infant is securely attached to its caregiver, the infant is more
willing to explore and interact with the world because the caregiver is the
focus of security to which the infant can safely retreat
Insecure Attachment
• Because the attachment relationship from the point of view of the
infant is not secure (or strong), its interaction with the world is
much reduced
Assessment/Management View of
Attachment
• Attachment relationship are analyzed in terms
of the Umwelten of the child and caregiver
• A caregiver with strong
assessment/management skills is more likely
to have a secure attachment relationship with
a child
• A caregiver with weak
assessment/management skills is more likely
to have an insecure attachment relatioship
with a child
Crying
• Crying is designed to capitalize on
motivational and emotional systems of
caregivers
• A paradoxical feature of crying
– It’s a signaling system that evolved to solicit
caregiving
– But it can also be aversive to caregivers that it can
at times evoke abuse of the crying infant
What about Colic?
• On the A/M approach, colic may be a byproduct of
cultural evolution in technologically-advanced cultures
• In Western cultures there is often greater distance
maintained between infant and caregiver
• When an infant is at a great distance from the
caregiver, there will be lags in responses
• In less technologically advanced societies, infant and
caregiver are often in very close proximity almost all of
the time, so that there are very rapid responses to
crying
The Evolutionary Origins of Crying
• How did crying evolve?
• It may have first evolved as a byproduct of other physiological
processes, and thereby give direct indications of infant distress
• Ultrasonic “retrieval calls” of infant rats are one possibility
• Mark Blumberg presented evidence that, in rats, ultrasonic
vocalizations have originated as a byproduct Laryngeal braking
(involves the constriction of the larynx following inspiration,
resulting in prolonged expiratory duration and enhanced gas
exchange) to utilize brown adipose tissue for producing heat
• According Blumberg,
– maternal retrieval evoked by ultra sounds originated through a process
of active caregiver assessment based on these sounds
– And does not require infant management
– The sounds are a cue and not a management system