Monkeys or Mamas? It's a Toss-Up for Newborns

There’s been a lot of discussion about whether newborn humans recognize their mothers’ voices, or anything else about them, The voice issue has received a great deal of emphasis because babies can hear speech sounds before birth. Even though the sounds are somewhat muffled by the mother’s skin, muscles, viscera, and amniotic fluid, they can be heard and are apparently recognized, as babies after birth have been shown to prefer familiar speech sounds to unfamiliar ones.

In addition to preferring the familiar, newborns prefer voices over other kinds of sounds from inanimate sources. They show this when they have learned that by sucking frequently on a pacifier-like object they can control whether they get to listen to voices or other sounds, or to familiar or unfamiliar voices.

Most researchers working on this topic have not thought about the effect of sounds that are not only unfamiliar, but not likely to be heard at all by most infants in the industrialized world. However, one group looked at whether babies were attentive to hearing rhesus monkey vocalizations (Vouloumanos, A., Hauser, M.D., Werker, J.F., & Martin, A. [2010]. The tuning of human neonates’ preference for speech. Child Development,81, 517-527). They were interested in learning whether newborns were really especially attentive to speech, or whether they preferred all sounds with characteristics they share with human speech-- like the sounds of monkey vocalization. These researchers let newborn babies hear nonsense speech and also recorded vocalizations of rhesus monkeys. The neonates were equally likely to choose (by sucking at the right time) to hear human nonsense speech or to hear monkey sounds. They chose both of these over synthetic sounds.

It seems that the newborn humans could not, or at least did not, tell the difference between humans speaking and monkeys vocalizing. But adults and even older children can readily make that discrimination. How and when do they manage this? Vouloumanos and her colleagues tested 3-month-old babies, using a different technique than the one they had used with the newborns. The 3-month-olds could keep a sound playing by looking at a black-and-white checked screen for a long time; if they looked away, the sound stopped; when they looked back again, one or another sound occurred at random. Unlike the newborns, the 3-month-olds spent more time looking in a way that would allow them to hear human speech sounds. They not only could, but did, tell the difference between human and monkey sounds.

How does this work compare with the research (by DeCasper, for instance) suggesting that newborns can make very careful discriminations, not only recognizing their mothers’ voices but even telling the difference between stories that were read? How could they tell these rather subtle differences, but not discriminate human and monkey vocalizations? Is a puzzlement, yes?

Vouloumanos and her colleagues suggested that this peculiar difference might result from the fact that the nonsense speech they used was quite brief and was not the connected speech of ordinary use. It may be that spoken sentences make available to babies a good deal more of the distinctively human speech characteristics that differ from those of monkey vocalization. Connected speech contains a variety of information in the form of syllable length, intonation and emphasis, rhythm, and so on. This rich, variable material may be much more effective in catching infants’ attention than brief nonsense words. In other words, the researchers speculated that the newborns actually could tell the difference between human and monkey sounds, but did not pay much attention to what they did not find very interesting.

Whether or not newborn babies can tell monkeys’ voices from mamas’ voices-- and a definitive answer is not yet available-- it’s clear that they do discriminate between voice sounds and synthetic sounds, and spend more time listening to voices when they get the chance. They are born with a positive bias, an interest in the sounds voices make. Is this because of prenatal experience with voices, because of a built-in “tuning” of the auditory system for those important sounds, or because of a combination of the two? That isn’t clear yet, but it is clear that newborns are still very much in the process of development, and adults should not jump to any conclusions about resemblances between the very young and the older human being.

Just a little addendum: when Vouloumanos and her colleagues did one of these experiments, they tested 30 babies. Another 44 babies were available but were excluded from the study because they fussed or fell asleep or because they did not suck often enough. If you ever wonder why research on young infants is not done more often and with larger numbers of babies,do remember this: just as you can’t make a turtle come out, you can’t make a baby participate if it doesn’t feel like it.

The Newborn and the Auxiliary Ego

The anthropologist-author Ashley Montagu famously suggested that humans are characterized by “exterogestation”-- a continuation of prenatal development that takes at least the first three months after birth. Montagu held that the early development of human infants actually takes a year from conception before the baby has the minimal ability to cope with the environment. It might well be more appropriate for human pregnancy to last a year, but our large brains and heads, combined with the small pelvic opening needed for upright walking, would make it impossible for a baby to be born after a year’s gestation.

Because they are born at an immature stage of development, there are a lot of important things newborn humans cannot do for themselves. An obvious one is the manufacture of immunoglobulins by the immune system. Caregivers provide an auxiliary immune system that helps out until the baby’s own system begins to mature at about a year of age. Breastfeeding mothers make immunoglobulins that protect against infections that enter through the mouth and gut (gastrointestinal infections, polio, and so on), and these are passed on in their milk. Both breastfeeding and non breastfeeding caregivers also provide auxiliary immune functions by keeping the environment clean, watching what the baby puts into her mouth, making careful choices of clean food and drink for the child, and preventing exposure to contagious disease if possible. (In modern societies, this auxiliary immune function includes providing immunization against disease.)

In addition to their auxiliary immune functions, caregivers also provide the baby with an auxiliary ego. The term “ego” here refers not to pride or self-esteem, but to the ability to carry out reality functions and to deal effectively with the environment. Ego functions include movement, motor skills, learned behavior, problem-solving, and memory. The caregiver acts as an auxiliary ego when doing tasks the infant needs done but cannot do.

It’s obvious that auxiliary ego functions including picking up the young infant, feeding, and cleaning. But a less obvious auxiliary ego function is fostering the infant’s organization of behavior. Newborns have difficulty organizing the timing and sequencing of behavior, and they show this in their disturbed and broken sleep and in the awkwardness they often show in taking the nipple and feeding, sometimes even choking when the milk comes so fast that they cannot co-ordinate sucking and swallowing.

Difficulties in organizing behavior are increased when bright lights, loud noises, or unpredictable movements influence the process. A baby may be very hungry or tired but unable to sleep or eat unless the caregiver’s auxiliary ego functions help to organize the behavior.

How does the caregiver manage to help in organization? One way is to reduce the amount of disturbing sensory stimulation the baby is receiving. Dimming the lights, reducing the noise level, or going to a place where there are fewer people may all be helpful to the baby’s organization of behavior, and they are all things the baby cannot do alone—ego functions that demand more maturity than he or she has.

A second way to help the baby organize behavior like sleeping or eating is to provide the baby with some sensory stimulation that has a predictable rhythm and intensity, like rocking, singing, or patting. The framework of this rhythm helps give the baby a pattern to follow as he or she establishes the rhythm necessary to organize the needed behavior. Sleeping, for instance, is aided by a pattern of slow, regular breathing, and feeding by a regular sequence of sucking and swallowing at given intervals.

When a baby is really distressed and too disorganized to do the sleeping or feeding that is needed, a caregiver may help by an auxiliary ego function known as “overriding the baby’s tempo”. The adult begins with a fairly intense, rapid rhythm of stimulation like fast rocking or singing and then gradually slows and quiets the stimulation. The baby’s rhythm of crying, breathing, and moving slows and regularizes in response, until it is calm and organized enough to sleep or eat.

It’s all too common for parents or their advisers to forget auxiliary ego functions, or to reject them as ways to “spoil” a young baby. It’s often said that parents should start as they mean to go on and should train their babies to independence by demanding that they organize their own behavior from birth. But it’s pointless to demand something a baby is incapable of doing. A better foundation for early development, and a happier household, will result from accepting auxiliary ego functions as an essential part of nurture. Providing such help to very young babies no more ruins their independence than their milk diet will later make them unable to eat pizza.

I would speculate that parents and other caregivers can learn much from helping a young baby organize behavior that will be useful to them when they have older children. Two related tasks of caregivers are buffering (helping older children deal with the impact of environmental problems like bullying) and scaffolding (helping children learn by methods like breaking a problem into parts). Each of these is a type of auxiliary ego function that enables children to do what they can rather than be overwhelmed by difficulty. Parents may be able to do a better job on these tasks if they have learned from seeing the effect of auxiliary ego functions on their young babies. Being an auxiliary ego for the newborn is really starting parenting as it would be a good idea to go on.

Newborns, Emotions, and Adultomorphism: Sources of the Primal Wound Myth

On several occasions, I’ve argued on this blog about some exaggerated views of newborn babies as adult-like in their feelings and thoughts. Those views may be described as “adultomorphic”-- a made-up word that’s parallel to the term “anthropomorphic” (meaning assigning human characteristics to something that is not human). “Adultomorphic” thinking attributes adult characteristics to infants and young children, and sometimes even to unborn babies. The myth of the “primal wound”, according to Nancy Verrier an emotional scar caused by early separation from the birthmother, is an example of adultomorphic thought.

Some authors offer adultomorphic descriptions of newborn babies and claim that they are supported by empirical investigations. This fact raises the question: who and what were the sources of the “primal wound” and similar ideas? I would suggest that a major contributor to this belief was David Chamberlain, a psychologist who was one of the founders of the Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH), an organization that supports a variety of unorthodox beliefs about prenatal life and even the influence of past lives. Chamberlain was also one of the founders of the Santa Barbara Graduate Institute, a nonaccredited organization that specializes in unconventional methods and belief systems.

In 1988, Chamberlain published a book called Babies Remember Birth; ten years later, that publication became part of The Mind of Your Newborn Baby. Chamberlain cites Nancy Verrier’s The Primal Wound but does not use that specific term. Nevertheless, he advocates strongly for the belief that babies before and at birth experience a range of emotions similar to those adults can experience, as well as thinking in adult-like ways. If this were true, of course, events like immediate separation from the birthmother could certainly have the impact claimed by proponents of the primal wound belief.

But let’s look at the evidence Chamberlain puts together to support his belief in the adult-like minds of newborn babies.

He argues first of all that the psychoanalyst Otto Rank believed that birth trauma was at the root of all psychological problems. This in itself might be irrelevant, but according to Chamberlain, Rank found that focusing on birth trauma enabled him to reduce the length of therapy from years to months. Chamberlain concluded that this supported the idea that experiences at the time of birth are highly significant.

Second, Chamberlain refers to the Vienna-born psychoanalyst Nandor Fodor, who “described many examples of adult memory flashes, dreams, or symptoms linked with birth” (Chamberlain, 1998, p. 89). He notes Fodor’s suggestion that telepathic communication between mother and unborn baby has an effect on the baby. (However, Chamberlain does not refer to Fodor’s extensive dream analyses, with their meticulous interpretation of symbols, including the meaning of specific numbers in dreams, and their interpretation of the letters Y and V as having sexual significance. Fodor also believed that infertility resulted from fear of responsibility and/or rejection of one’s femininity.)

Third, Chamberlain cites L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the “Church of Scientology”, and his “auditing” methods that “frequently uncovered birth memories. His handbook of techniques for ‘auditors’ taught a method of tracing symptoms back to their origins, some of which were at birth or in the womb… he found that people were capable of going into a mental state called ‘dianetic reverie’ … in which they could have access to painful ‘recordings’ (not memories) ‘locked’ in the cells of the body… during dianetic reverie, Hubbard claimed, people could relive traumatic incidents that had occurred at any stage of cellular development from zygote to newborn… Hubbard was elated to report that the recording of a mother and child pair in dianetic therapy compared word for word, detail for detail, and name for name” (Chamberlain, p. 91). (This claim of “recording” seems comparable to Verrier’s belief that “cellular memory” is involved in the primal wound she posits.)

Chamberlain goes on to refer to the investigations by Stanislav Grof of experiences during LSD use. Grof “found his clients [on LSD] constantly returning to aspects of their birth experience. Grof developed the conviction that labor and delivery exerted a profound and lasting effect on personality… Grof has developed a system of ‘holotropic’ therapy in which-- by a variety of sounds, music, and movements-- memories of childhood, birth, and before birth are evoked without drugs” (Chamberlain, p. 95).

Chamberlain also states his belief that children sometimes describe their births spontaneously and correctly, although their parents report that they have not described the births to the children. (He does not, however, note whether the children have seen pictures or heard stories of births which they may adapt to their own story, or whether they have overheard adult conversations.) Chamberlain reports having hypnotized ten pairs of mothers and their children ages 9 to 23 years, elicited their birth descriptions, and found many similarities.

Here is the evidence on which claims of adult-like emotions and thoughts among newborns are based: a claim of efficacy of birth-focused psychotherapy; a claim of telepathic communication; the views of Scientologists; reports of experiences under LSD treatment; hypnotic recall (incidentally, long ago shown not to be more accurate than ordinary memory); and unverified reports that children have told birth stories without receiving information from adults. Are these sufficient to establish the idea that newborns have adult-like emotions and cognitions? It does not appear to me that these reports are even relevant to the question.

The primal wound idea rests on the assumption that adult-like emotions exist before, during, and immediately after birth. The natural history of emotional development contradicts this idea, and the points put forward by Chamberlain appear to play no role in the argument.

Chamberlain’s book repeatedly emphasizes the idea that because newborns share characteristics of adults, they need and deserve careful treatment. Like many other authors dealing with issues about newborns, he seems to feel that if newborns are not seen as adult-like, people will feel that they do not need excellent nurturing and thoughtful care, but that instead they are simple “masses of cells” without thought or feeling. Let me point out, however, that a newborn need not have to be like an adult in order to require tender care. He or she can simply be a newborn-- what a newborn really is-- neither an insentient machine of flesh, nor an adult mind in a tiny body, but a human being whose needs are all the greater because of the early stage of development. That those needs are very different from the needs of an adult does not make them unimportant. It does mean, though, that we grown-ups may need to work hard, and pay attention to relevant empirical research, in order to avoid “adultomorphizing” and drawing very wrong conclusions.