Social from Birth
By Katharine B. Stevens
BLOG
October 15, 2018
A growing body of research has revealed that infancy is a far more critical period of life than previously recognized, laying the foundation for future development and lifelong ability. Perhaps the most significant new understanding is the degree to which babies are inherently social from birth.
In the first weeks of life, infants are already highly aware, communicative beings, born with the capacity to seek out, perceive, and respond to even tiny, fleeting shifts in caregivers’ verbal tone, facial expression, and body movement. Indeed, infant development is shaped by an environment of face-to-face social relationships; the nature of those relationships — the ongoing one-on-one back-and-forth with caregivers — interacts with the infant’s unfolding genetic predispositions as the primary driver of social, emotional, and cognitive growth.
Dr. Beatrice Beebe, a major pioneer of infant study, will join us at AEI this Friday to share highlights from her decades of groundbreaking research “decoding” the surprisingly complex, nuanced nature of babies’ nonverbal communication. Her work provides a unique and fascinating window into children’s earliest development.
Dr. Beebe’s laboratory at Columbia University studies infant communication using video microanalysis as a “social microscope,” allowing researchers to see details too subtle to grasp with the naked eye. Her team closely observes and analyzes the rapid, mutually responsive shifts in tone, expression, and movement that occur as four-month-old babies interact with their mothers. These patterns of instantaneous action and reaction take place within fractions of seconds — imperceptible in real time but detectable in frame-by-frame video microanalysis.
Using a second set of observations conducted eight months later, Dr. Beebe has further demonstrated that the quality of the interactions between a mother and her four-month-old baby strongly predicts the character of their relationship when the baby reaches one year of age. In turn, longitudinal research suggests that the nature of infants’ relationships at one year predicts a broad range of academic, social, and emotional outcomes into adulthood.
More broadly, Dr. Beebe’s research has shown that by four months of age babies are intensely communicative and responsive to the emotions and behavior of those around them. Even as babies’ earliest interactions appear mundane in the “real time” of caring for children, the quality of those moment-to-moment, day-to-day interactions — whether with parents or other caregivers — matter much more profoundly to children’s healthy development than we’ve fully understood.
See Also
Event ~ October 19, 2018
Blog ~ June 19, 2019
Op-Ed ~ July 14, 2016