Babies Smile and Behave - 2

Is Smiling/Laughing Behavior Innate or Acquired? Nobody can deny that visual stimulus is particularly important for the baby's smiling/laughing response. Certainly when we look in the eyes of babies of one to two months old, we see them smile and then laugh. Smiling/laughing response of the baby is caused by the so-called eye-to-eye contact. Then what happens to the babies who cannot see? This has been an issue of great interest for many pediatricians, whether the babies' social laughing behavior is innate or acquired. Old reports say that babies who cannot see do not smile and laugh or at least they do not show the same expression of smiling/laughing as healthy babies. According to these reports this is because babies who are visually impaired for some reasons do not have an opportunity to learn the smiling/laughing expression from others. More recent studies, however, in particular many studies on retinopathy of prematurity1 indicate that visual sense is not always a necessarily condition for the development of smiling/laughing response. Human beings have developed their neurological functions like spirit and emotions in the long process of evolution. The smiling/laughing behavior has also been incorporated into their genetic mechanism in the process of social and cultural development. With an appropriate stimulus the baby's laughing behavior starts at several months old, although smiling may well be shown soon after birth. Charles Darwin made a record that his child had started to laugh at fifty-five days old and thought that it was too early for the baby to learn from others; he thought that laughing response must be innate2. To Live in a Complex Cultural Society Babies' laughter and smile are worth everything. Anyone feels the joy to live as a human being to see a baby smile or laugh. Any mother or father feels the desire and joy of childrearing. Babies' smiling and laughing behavior attracts the attention of people who bring them up to make human networks. Laughing behavior is essential for the babies to survive in a complex human network and cultural society. One's infancy is as long as twelve months; babies cannot do anything on their own. That is why they need this specific behavior in order to survive by all means in the human networks.. 1: Retinopathy of prematurity Visual disorder caused by the increase in partial pressure of oxygen in arterial blood due to the premature retinal blood vessel. Premature babies with the birth weight of 1,500g or less have this disease more frequently. Symptoms become more frequent and serious as the dosage period and amount of oxygen goes up. There is an engorgement and tortuosity of retinal blood vessel with the peripheral neovascularity accompanied by bleeding. Further progress causes the ablation of retina and in the scarred stage there is a fibroplasia retrolentalis with white pupil. Spontaneous remission is applied for early-stage treatment but in later stage light coagulation is applied. 2: Innate When a behavior is supposed to be acquired in the evolution process and incorporated genetically, it is called innate. This is a genetic ability or one's nature. It is distinguished from the nature that happened in the uterus; inborn is used in the same way including genetic ability. Kobayashi, Noboru (1981). "Akachan wa waratte kodo suru - 2." (written in Japanese). Tokyo: Child Research Net. Retrieved Oct 9, 2003, from the World Wide Web http://www.crn.or.jp/LIBRARY/KOBY/MIRAI/cbs0106.html

Copyright (c) 2004, Child Research Net, All Rights Reserved.