Newborn behaviors and early
interactions
Daniel Messinger
Messinger
Questions
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Neonate: What do studies of neonatal imitation indicate?
Based on your observations, can neonatal macaques
imitate? What form do neonatal smiles have? Are they due
to gas? Are they a reflex? What is a reflex?
What are advantages of breast-feeding? What issues are
relevant to promoting breast-feeding?
What is the central issue in investigating the effects of
breast-feeding vs. bottle-feeding? How do infant and
mother interact (influence each other) during feeding?
How is this and how is it not interaction? [How do
your observations of feeding relate to this topic?]
Discuss the Brazelton exam and what it reveals about the
individuality of neonates (give examples from film).
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Neonates are newborns
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Subjectivity
Neonatal imitation - video
Characteristics and capacities
Evaluation of individuality through the Brazelton
exam
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Neonatal smiling
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film
Reflexes
video
Feeding
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Neonates are
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Weak with limited motor capacities and
self-regulatory capabilities
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But an impressive array of reflexes and learning
abilities that aid self-preservation
Functional but immature sensory capacities
 Strident expressive abilities such as crying
 Engage in primitive interactions such as
during feeding
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Subjectivity
The baby, assailed by eyes, ears,
nose, skin, and entrails at once.
Feels that all is one great
blooming buzzing confusion.
William James, 1890
Some support: Enhanced neural intermingling
newborn sensations “mixed together like a
boulillabaisse” (Maurer & Maurer, 1988).
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Contemporary subjectivity
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Some multimodal comprehension
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imitation
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Continuous, rapid integration
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Infant is always learning about, interacting
with world.
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Neonatal imitation
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Infants between 12
and 21 days
Imitation implies that
human neonates can
equate their own
unseen behaviors with
gestures they see
others perform.
ANDREW N. MELTZOFF 1 and M. KEITH MOORE 21
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Monkey see, monkey do?
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Macaque imitation (Ferrari et al., 2006)?
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day 1 “mouth openings elicited a similar matched
behavior (lip smacking)”.
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confined to a narrow temporal window.
Mouth opening: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k72WFYv6WMw
Tongue protrusion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9k4Y8x-L6E
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Chimps imitate mouth opening (Bard, 2007)
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Debate: What exactly does infant do in response to
exactly what stimulus?
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Human example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2YdkQ1G5QI&NR=1
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What does it mean?
Amodal ability
 Means to explore world
 Why does it disappear?
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Neonatal Smiling:
A Developmental Puzzle
Messinger et al., 2002; Dondi et al., 2007
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What’s known
Endogenous smiles while asleep (REM)
 Not more frequent after feeding
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Not gas
More smiling in premature infants
 Smiling in microcephalic infant
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Suggests neonatal smiling is subcortical
Nothing is known about how neonates smile
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type of smile
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Duchenne > open-mouth smiles
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Half of smiles are Duchenne, suggests joy
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52% of neonates, .21 times per minute
Few open mouth smiles (which suggest
social arousal), 8%, .02 times per minute
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Smiling issues
Are babies feeling joy (but not much
arousal) or is this a muscular synergy?
 Why does smiling disappear after the
neonatal period and before social smiling?
 Neonates smile in non-sleep states, but not
as frequently.
 Naïve observers perceive neonatal smiles at
less than half the rate of coders.
 Video
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Altricial-------------------Precocial
altricial - young are relatively immobile,
lack hair, require adult care;
 Precocial – mature sensory and motor
apparatus, mobile
 What are humans?
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Tasks of the neonatal period
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Infant
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Energy conservation
Gain body weight
 Born
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7 ½ pounds, 20 inches long
Parent
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Coordinate schedule
 Sleep
about sixteen hours a day
 Eat approximately every three hours
 In first year, most infants grow about ten inches
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Importance of feeding
Young babies must conserve energy
 But sucking serves nutrition
 So they will suck to produce interesting
stimuli
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before they will kick to produce the same
stimuli
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Time feeding decreases with age
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Nursing Period (0 - 6 months)
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Who breast feeds?
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50 - 60% of mothers
Highest among college educated, high-income
mothers above 30
Lowest among young , less educated, black,
Hispanic, economically disadvantaged
 MLS
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Resources (La Leche League, J. of H. Lact.)
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Breast-feeding Advantages
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Human milk - the nutritional standard
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Sterile (vs. formula use in underdeveloped countries)
Confers antibodies to baby
Lactose (from milk) is the primary carbohydrate in the
young infant’s diet.
Too little protein - restricted growth.
For mother, breastfeeding promotes
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uterine contraction
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Bottle feeding is ok
Harder to breast-feed when working
 Formula provides what’s needed for healthy
growth
 Normal growth - the best index of good
nutrition
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Breastfeeding: Long-term
outcomes?
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Breastfed babies do better than bottle-fed babies and the longer they are breastfed, the better they
do - on various measures of cognitive achievement
and outcome
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WISC intelligence at 8 and 9 years of age
Math and reading from 8 to 12 years
High school attainment exams at 15 & 16
•
L. John Horwood and David M. Fergusson (1998).
Breastfeeding and Later Cognitive and Academic
Outcomes. Pediatrics, 101 (1), e9
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Other factors may be responsible
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Breastfed babies have other advantages
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Better educated mothers
More well to-do familes
Mothers less likely to smoke
Infants a little heavier at birth
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But . .
Breasteeding is still associated with positive
outcomes after statistically controlling for
other factors
 What might be producing the breastfeeding
effect?
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Infant sucking – a specialized
process
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Gums make the seal
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Lower jaw drops to create negative pressure
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Not by by breathing in
Tongue expresses milk from back of nipple
to front
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Not lips
Which is why young infants expel solids
Which triggers swallowing
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Feeding is interaction
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Bi-directional
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Each partner influences the other
Infant: can continue suck or pause sucking
 Mother: can jiggle or not jiggle nipple
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Forerunner of face-to-face interaction and
conversational turn-taking?
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Bi-directional detail
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Baby pauses elicit mom jiggling nipple
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should be rare when the baby is sucking
If jiggle continues, infant least likely to suck
If there is no jiggle, intermediate likelihood of
sucking
If jiggle-then-stop, infant is most likely to suck
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Experimental data show the jiggle must be brief
Mothers shorten duration of jiggles in 1st 2 weeks
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Moms influence on baby
Mothers are inserting jiggles in cycles of
infant sucks and pauses
 So infant would start sucking even if mom
did not jiggle
 But jiggling and then stopping jiggling does
encourage suck
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Psychology of early feeding
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Early anaclitic model
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interaction depends on nourishment
Current interactive view
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Breast or bottle doesn’t matter for interaction
Reading baby’s cues
Interactive process
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Paired concepts from Video
Mother and infant
 Interaction and feeding
 Sensitivity and matter-of-factness
 Quantitative and qualitative measures
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Sensory system development
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Sensory capacity
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Smell
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Turn down the corners of their mouths to bad
smells, such as rotten eggs
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Facial relaxation to sweet smells like chocolate
Taste is similar
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Discriminate bitter, neutral, and sweet (Oster)
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Prefer sweet tastes to all others
Evolutionary advantages
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Sensory capacity: Vision
 Vision
is functional from birth
 But acuity is 1/25 that of adults
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20:500,
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blurry but in color
 Improves
to 20:20 by six months
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Auditory Abilities: Hearing
 40-50
Db. Not 10
 Sound localization is good
 Detect one note differences
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Reflexes
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Definition: A given stimuli produces a
stereotypic response
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Relatively invariant
 Is
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smiling a reflex?
Spinal cord control: Present in anencephaly
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Primitive reflexes
 Sucking
and grasping
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Reflex functionality
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Survival and protection
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Sucking
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Grasping (evolutionary environment)
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Habituation
Development
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Bases for later action
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Sucking (Piaget)
But also drop out
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Brazelton Scale (NBAS)
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Assesses Four Dimensions of Infant
Behavior
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Motor Behavior and Reflexes
Physiological Control
Response to Stress
Interactive Behaviors
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Integrated into a
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Behavioral "portrait" of the infant, describing the
baby's strengths, individuality, adaptive responses
and possible vulnerabilities.
These individual differences are used for different
purposes
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Clinical (neurological)
Research
Parent education
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Behavior depends on state
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Links input and output
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Though babies can influence behavioral state
through their activities
Self-regulating
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Simplified system
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(1) Sleeping; eyes closed throughout feeding
session.
(2) Drowsy; eyes may be open but dull and heavy
lidded, eyelids fluttering, Gaze does not shift,
baby may stare.
(3) Alert: eyes opened, seems to focus on the
caretaker or bottle.
(4) Fussy/crying; whimpering or crying during
food.
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Most time sleeping
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Mean duration of waking increases
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Brazelton exam overview
Individual differences
 Best performance
 State as baseline for behavior
 Examiner changes behavior
 Allowing infants to express individual
differences in self-comforting,
attentiveness, state-regulation, etc.
 Video
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Grasping reflex
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Stimulation: Palm of baby’s hand is stroked
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Behavior: Baby makes strong fist; can be
raised to standing position if both fists are
closed around a stick.
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Approx. Age of dropping out: 2 months
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Walking
Stimulation: Baby is held with bare feet
touching flat surface
 Behavior: Baby makes step-like motions
that look like well-coordinated walking
 Approx. Age of dropping out: 2 months
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Why does it drop out?
Under what circumstances can it be seen
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after two months
What does this tell us about developmental
process?
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Moro (startle)
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Stimulation: Baby is dropped or hear loud
noise
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Behavior: Baby extends legs, arms, and
fingers; arches back; draw back head.
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Approx. Age of dropping out: 3 months
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Babinski
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Stimulation: Sole of baby’s foot is stroked
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Behavior: Baby’s toes fan out; foot twists in
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Approx. Age of dropping out: 6-9 months
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Additional neonate readings
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Brazelton et al. on neonatal individuality
Lester et al. on neonatal individuality through differences
in pain cries
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Can neonates imitate? (Meltzoff et al.)
Causes and consequences of imitation.
By Heyes, C. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 2001 Jun Vol
5(6) 253-261
No compelling evidence that newborns imitate oral
gestures. Anisfeld, M; Turkewitz, G; Rose, SA.;
Rosenberg, F R.; Sheiber, F J.; Couturier-Fagan, D A.;
Ger, J S.; Sommer, Infancy. 2001 Vol 2(1) 111-122
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Colic as an individual difference that does not predict
Multimodal perception studies
Wolff
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Additional Feeding Readings
L. John Horwood and David M. Fergusson
(1998). Breastfeeding and Later Cognitive
and Academic Outcomes. Pediatrics, 101
(1), e9
 Kaye & Wells (1980).
 Rovee-Collier and the energy budget
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Heart rate – classic orienting index
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Heart rate variability  vagal tone
 index of optimal functioning
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