Learning about Ourselves, from Children：Why A Growing Human Brain Needs Interesting Companions?

Abstract

A Different Psychology of Education?9 About 30 years ago developmental psychologists could not believe it when they were offered proof that newborn infants express states of mind and respond like persons (Maratos, 1973(Maratos, , 1982;; Meltzoff and Moore, 1977).It was a rediscovery, of course, but the new evidence was clear.And it was in accord with demonstrations that very young infants, under 3 months, could take part intelligently in expressive exchanges of 'protoconversation' with an attentive and affectionate mother (Bateson, 1971(Bateson, , 1975;;Trevarthen, 1979).Many stuck to a hard line and refused to accept new evidence for behaviours that the famous modern developmental psychologists Freud, Piaget and Skinner had thought were impossible in such immature and inexperienced humans.But, newborns are actively seeking for experience and for communication.This effort must be doing something that is important for cognitive development, and for learning and education.Some neonatal expressions are obviously adapted to elicit parental care for internal needs -states of behavioural arousal and sleep, comfort, feeding and protection from environmental dangers.Other expressions of playful communication (smiling, gaze approach/avoidance, coo vocalisations and many hand gestures) transmit emotions of 'interest ' and 'pleasure' to social contact (frevarthen and Aitken, 2001).Once we abandon reductive assumptions based on prejudices that the newborn must be a reactive sensory-motor system without coherence of intention, a different 'sociable' infant appears.Emotional expressions of newborns -smiles and coos of recognition, frowns of annoyance, and hand movements that signal changing states of alertness, distress or interest, and readiness for making communication -announce, for a sympathetic other person, the infant's state of openness to the world, and his or her estimation of risks associated with changing intentions.In these ways of behaving a healthy and alert baby, looking to the future, shows social initiative.He or she has selective, self-regulating reaction to a partner's intimate responses.This fits the common sense feeling of every parent, as well as the advice of the wisest paediatricians, that the baby is a person looking for live company in a happy family and a friendly community (Gomes-Pedro, et aI., 2002).Why is a baby human being so complicated at birth?Why is it not enough that the baby cries for help and knows how to suck at the breast?The answer seems to be this: being conversational is what it takes for a young person to begin learning what other people know and do, and this is the behaviour a fond parent expects, and enjoys.It is the human adaptation for cultural learning.

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