Patterns of Response to Physical Contact in Early Human Development

Formation and expression of filial attachment in rhesus monkeys raised with living and inanimate mother substitutes

“…In any event, individual differences in the initial phase of attachment formation were not sufficiently enduring to qualify as stable personality traits, nor was there any hint in our data that they had significant long-term developmental consequences. Schaffer and Emerson (1964) reached a similar conclusion from their examination of early individual differences in the attachment behavior of human infants.…”

Motor Activity in a Group of Newborn Babies

“…by stabilimeter (11J, by cinematography [13], by rating scales [25]; and the amount of motor activity has been interpreted in a variety of ways, e.g. as evidence of neurological damage [15,16], as a measure of 'state' which is thought to influence the character of an infant's response to stimulation [3,6,16], and as an innate or genetic feature of a child's behaviour [8,9,12,21,22]. The strongest expression of this last interpretation may be found in the phrase 'congenital activity type ' [9] but the notion that individual variations in activity can be detected in infants, that they persist into adulthood and influence development has been suggested bya number of authors [1,7,8,12,21], This hypothesis has not been demonstrated experimentally.…”

Early stimulation and maternal care as related to infant capabilities and individual differences†

“…A mother's fear of "spoiling" her infant may make her refrain from soothing efforts which her infant may sorely need. Or a mother, who in terms of her own psychological or symbiotic needs, may wish for a cuddly newborn to whom she can give a lot of contact comfort, may get off to a wrong start if she happens to have an active, uncuddly baby who resists physical restraint (Schaffer and Emerson, 1964).…”

“…Individual differences in autonomic reactivity in newborns have been studied in the hope of identifying the physiological antecedents to differing styles of affect management as well as the precursors of psychosomatic disease. Innate activity level has been centrally implicated as a determinant of infantile reaction to deprivation (Schaffer, 1966) and of the extent of contact seeking and the intensity of the infant's attachment behavior (Schaffer and Emerson, 1964). It is probably the integration and balance between the sensory threshold levels and the levels of activation and the resultant effects on personal tempo and on approach toward, and withdrawal from stimulation which have the greatest impact on both cognitive and affective development.…”