Newborn behaviors and early interactions

1. Newborn behaviors and early interactions Daniel Messinger Messinger

2. Questions • 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). Messinger

3. Neonates are newborns • Subjectivity • Neonatal imitation - video • Characteristics and capacities • Evaluation of individuality through the Brazelton exam • film • Reflexes • Neonatal smiling • video • Feeding Messinger

4. Neonates are • Weak with limited motor capacities and self-regulatory capabilities • 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 Messinger

5. 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). Messinger

6. Contemporary subjectivity • Some multimodal comprehension • imitation • Continuous, rapid integration • Infant is always learning about, interacting with world. Messinger

7. Neonatal imitation • Infants between 12 and 21 days • Imitation implies that human neonates can equate their own unseenbehaviors with gestures they see others perform. ANDREW N. MELTZOFF 1 and M. KEITH MOORE 21 Messinger

8. Monkey see, monkey do? • Macaque imitation (Ferrari et al., 2006)? • day 1 “mouth openings elicited a similar matched behavior (lip smacking)”. • 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 • Chimps imitate mouth opening (Bard, 2007) • Debate: What exactly does infant do in response to exactly what stimulus? • Human example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2YdkQ1G5QI&NR=1 Messinger

9. What does it mean? • Amodal ability • Means to explore world • Why does it disappear? Messinger

10. Neonatal Smiling:A Developmental Puzzle Messinger

11. What’s known • Endogenous smiles while asleep (REM) • Not more frequent after feeding • Not gas • More smiling in premature infants • Smiling in microcephalic infant • Suggests neonatal smiling is subcortical • Nothing is known about how neonates smile • type of smile Messinger

12. Duchenne > open-mouth smiles • Half of smiles are Duchenne, suggests joy • 52% of neonates, .21 times per minute • Few open mouth smiles (which suggest social arousal), 8%, .02 times per minute Messinger

13. 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 Messinger

14. Altricial-------------------Precocial • altricial - young are relatively immobile, lack hair, require adult care; • Precocial – mature sensory and motor apparatus, mobile  • What are humans? Messinger

15. Tasks of the neonatal period • Infant • Energy conservation • Gain body weight • Born 7 ½ pounds, 20 inches long • Parent • Coordinate schedule • Sleep about sixteen hours a day • Eat approximately every three hours • In first year, most infants grow about ten inches Messinger

16. Importance of feeding • Young babies must conserve energy • But sucking serves nutrition • So they will suck to produce interesting stimuli • before they will kick to produce the same stimuli Messinger

17. Time feeding decreases with age Messinger

18. Nursing Period (0 - 6 months) • Who breast feeds? • 50 - 60% of mothers • Highest among college educated, high-income mothers above 30 • Lowest among young , less educated, black, Hispanic, economically disadvantaged • MLS • Resources (La Leche League, J. of H. Lact.) Messinger

19. Breast-feeding Advantages • Human milk - the nutritional standard • 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 • uterine contraction Messinger

20. 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 Messinger

21. Breastfeeding: Long-term outcomes? • 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 • 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 Messinger

22. Other factors may be responsible • Breastfed babies have other advantages • Better educated mothers • More well to-do familes • Mothers less likely to smoke • Infants a little heavier at birth Messinger

23. But . . • Breasteeding is still associated with positive outcomes after statistically controlling for other factors • What might be producing the breastfeeding effect? Messinger

24. Infant sucking – a specialized process • Gums make the seal • Not lips • Lower jaw drops to create negative pressure • Not by by breathing in • Tongue expresses milk from back of nipple to front • Which is why young infants expel solids • Which triggers swallowing Messinger

25. Feeding is interaction • Bi-directional • Each partner influences the other • Infant: can continue suck or pause sucking • Mother: can jiggle or not jiggle nipple • Forerunner of face-to-face interaction and conversational turn-taking? Messinger

26. Bi-directional detail • Baby pauses elicit mom jiggling nipple • 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 • Experimental data show the jiggle must be brief • Mothers shorten duration of jiggles in 1st 2 weeks Messinger

27. 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 Messinger

28. Psychology of early feeding • Early anaclitic model • interaction depends on nourishment • Current interactive view • Breast or bottle doesn’t matter for interaction • Reading baby’s cues • Interactive process Messinger

29. Paired concepts from Video • Mother and infant • Interaction and feeding • Sensitivity and matter-of-factness • Quantitative and qualitative measures Messinger

30. Sensory system development Messinger

31. Sensory capacity • Smell • Turn down the corners of their mouths to bad smells, such as rotten eggs • Facial relaxation to sweet smells like chocolate • Taste is similar • Discriminate bitter, neutral, and sweet (Oster) • Prefer sweet tastes to all others • Evolutionary advantages Messinger

32. Sensory capacity: Vision • Vision is functional from birth • But acuity is 1/25 that of adults • 20:500, • blurry but in color • Improves to 20:20 by six months Messinger

33. Auditory Abilities: Hearing • 40-50 Db. Not 10 • Sound localization is good • Detect one note differences Messinger

34. Reflexes • Definition: A given stimuli produces a stereotypic response • Relatively invariant • Is smiling a reflex? • Spinal cord control: Present in anencephaly • Primitive reflexes • Sucking and grasping Messinger

35. Reflex functionality • Survival and protection • Sucking • Grasping (evolutionary environment) • Habituation • Development • Bases for later action • Sucking (Piaget) • But also drop out Messinger

36. Brazelton Scale (NBAS) • Assesses Four Dimensions of Infant Behavior • Motor Behavior and Reflexes • Physiological Control • Response to Stress • Interactive Behaviors Messinger

37. Integrated into a • Behavioral "portrait" of the infant, describing the baby's strengths, individuality, adaptive responses and possible vulnerabilities. • These individual differences are used for different purposes • Clinical (neurological) • Research • Parent education Messinger

38. Behavior depends on state • Links input and output • Though babies can influence behavioral state through their activities • Self-regulating Messinger

39. Simplified system • (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. Messinger

40. Most time sleeping Messinger

41. Mean duration of waking increases Messinger

42. 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 Messinger

43. Grasping reflex • Stimulation: Palm of baby’s hand is stroked • Behavior: Baby makes strong fist; can be raised to standing position if both fists are closed around a stick. • Approx. Age of dropping out: 2 months Messinger

44. 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 • Why does it drop out? • Under what circumstances can it be seen • even after two months • What does this tell us about developmental process? Messinger

45. Moro (startle) • Stimulation: Baby is dropped or hear loud noise • Behavior: Baby extends legs, arms, and fingers; arches back; draw back head. • Approx. Age of dropping out: 3 months Messinger

46. Babinski • Stimulation: Sole of baby’s foot is stroked • Behavior: Baby’s toes fan out; foot twists in • Approx. Age of dropping out: 6-9 months Messinger

47. Additional neonate readings • Brazelton et al. on neonatal individuality • Lester et al. on neonatal individuality through differences in pain cries • Colic as an individual difference that does not predict • 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 • Multimodal perception studies • Wolff Messinger

48. 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 Messinger

49. Heart rate – classic orienting index Messinger

50. Heart rate variability  vagal tone  index of optimal functioning Messinger