Early Stimulation In Infants And Its Possible Advantages

Early Stimulation in Infants and its Possible Advantages Identifying the Process Dr Brent Logan of the Pre-Natal Institute, Oregon, USA believes that there are levels of dysfunction amongst normal people that can be improved to allow for the development of human performance. He has developed a programme for assessing human beings and by the early 1990s he had stimulated, pre-natally, 10,000 children by means of a synthesised heart beat. He said that this has brought about physical and mental changes in the new born that were immediately obvious when compared with the norm. There were improved linguistic skills and the children have shown a 25% to 50% improvement on all tests of human performance. The programme consistently produced results which showed an IQ at age five years of 160. Another scientist, Dr Mikhail Lazarev, of the Children’s Rehabilitation Centre, at the Moscow Clinic, specialises in educational courses for the unborn, bases a similar programme on music rather than on pure sound. His work began with the enquiry from when can a child be stimulated in order to uncover its hidden reserves. His response was that it can begin in the womb. He developed a course of musical training for the unborn child, and believes that the foetus’s contact with the outside world is mainly through sound. Using the precept that the most sophisticated form of sound is music, he found that patterns of musical vibrations help to organize the developing fetal brain. Sounds can be heard and remembered by the as yet unborn child from as early as 20 weeks after conception. 1 Professor Peter Hepper of Queens University, Belfast is a world authority on the psychology of the fetus. He was rather sceptical of Logan’s claims and believed that he has shown no theoretical basis for them He proposed scientific caution, finding it unacceptable to take Logan’s empirical results for granted. He felt that there was no proof that the assumed improvement in development of any particular child was the result of the sound stimulation rather than to the qualities of the parent’s care and general nurturance. However after much research of his own he was prepared to concede that unborn children are capable of learning in the broadest sense. Dr René Van De Carr of Hayward, California did research experiments in maternal communication to the fetus by touch and talking and achieved comparable results to those of Logan and Lazarev. Dr Marian Diamond of the University of California, Berkeley, estimated that 50% of the brain’s nerves cells in the fetus die off before birth. She indicated that 50,000 cells per second are being evolved during fetal development. This obvious over-production means that many do not make connections and are therefore lost. Logan believed that by stimulating the brain of the fetus some of this loss is preventable  the key to saving the cells is, he says, through hearing, the most developed sense in the unborn child. The heartbeat is the first imprint on the hearing of the developing fetus and is equivalent, in the area of the womb, to 95 decibels. This primal imprint is varied in its rhythm by synthesis and is used by Logan to ‘exercise’ the brain. He reckoned that most of what the fetus heard in the normal course of events is “nonsense”, unless it relates to the primal imprint of the mother’s heartbeat. Hepper has shown that babies, immediately after birth, seem to prefer, or at least react, to the sound and smell stimuli that they have experienced during fetal life. He has

demonstrated this by showing particular responses in the new-born child to TV theme tunes and to smells of the favourite food that the mother had consumed during her pregnancy. Rossi has indicated that infants can differentiate the smell of their own mothers’ milk from that of other mothers.2 Hepper was not prepared to say how much human babies can learn from pre-natal stimulation, and points to other species that can learn in a similar manner but who ‘switch-off’ to the stimulus after a very short time. He felt that this indicated that two minutes stimulation might be as valuable as an hour due to the habituation response. He had no hesitation in accepting that an enriched environment is of benefit to the fetus. Logan and Lazarev did some joint research on three groups of mothers: the first were exposed to Logan’s system, the second to Lazarev’s system and the third, as a control, were exposed to unsystematic music. Both of the first two produced very interesting advances in neuro-muscular developments. These included: •

relaxed body at birth

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hands open at birth

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eyes open at birth

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facial stares at birth

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first infant speechB+ 1.5, M 3, C 4

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first maternal voice responseB+ 5, M 7, C 9

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first sound reactionB+ 11, M 35, C 27

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first playingB+ 17.5, M 22, C 20.5

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first gesture of fulfilmentB+ 32.5, M 37, C later

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first verbal request fulfilment B+ 38.5, M 39, C later

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first points to body parts on requestB+ 43.5, M 52, C later.

KEY B+ = Logan’s subjects M = Lazarev’s subjects C = Control subjects Number = age in months at first occurrence

Babies who had been stimulated pre-natally could lift up their heads two weeks earlier than other children, they could sit up and stand up sooner, and walk ahead of time. At six months they could fixate on something, e.g. tunes on TV, and their concentration developed earlier. The M children (Lazarev’s programme) showed advantages in other areas such as emotional development and the ability to communicate and relate to other children. It might therefore be of benefit to use the two systems together; B+ (Logan) producing physiological improvements and M (Lazarev) producing psychological advancement. There is of course an important corollary to this type of programme. If we produce a large number of gifted children will their needs be fulfilled by the society which breeds them? If not they will be exposed to a wretched existence (Lazarev). There are grave responsibilities placed upon those who pursue this work. Logan intensified his research mainly in order to gain a new and higher standard of performance for those who would probably be achievers without the new stimulation. Consideration should be given to the economic value of this research from its use with those who otherwise might be under-achievers. As it happens Logan’s apparatus for his programme is not expensive and therefore it is not difficult for almost any family to pursue his programme. It was taken up by those of very modest means who were on the outskirts of American civilization, e.g. in the reservations. It proved here that it can demonstrate the value in terms of fetal mental development that it has shown elsewhere. In these circumstances it is even more important that children who are improved pre-natally do not have to languish in what would be a less than challenging

environment. Early learning activity has been shown to enhance the development of children, particularly the bright ones. 3 However the work done with those of lower intellect is also of substantial value. This is not only because the child is helped intellectually, but by dint of the time spent working with the child by the parents, it increases their interaction and promotes other benefits of a psycho-social nature.

Is There a Need for Change? What has happened to the way in which children’s lives develop that has brought about investigations into ways in which they might be improved? Mowrer and Kluckhohn writing in the 1940s had this to say: In most mammals the behaviour of the mother toward newly born offspring is instinctively tender, protective, and indulgent, which does much to cushion the shock of beginning a biologically independent existence. But since the instinctive control of maternal behaviour has largely disappeared in human beings, the treatment of the neonate falls almost wholly under cultural domination. While this fact makes for tremendously greater flexibility in determining the kinds of persons into which human infants may be made, it carries an attendant danger. If instincts have the disadvantage of being inflexible, they also have, given a stable and appropriate environment, a wisdom born of countless generations of evolutionary selection. It is consequently understandable how difficult it is to insure that all human parents shall have acquired, on the basis of individual experience, comparable competence in playing the parental rôle. In those few remaining “primitive” societies in which the cultural patterns have been slowly perfected, over hundreds of years and have not been disrupted by contact with Western civilization, the problem of how parents should behave in their relationship with children hardly exists. Individual fathers and mothers may vary slightly from community standards, but there is little question about what is “ right.” In contrast, our own society presents a welter of inconsistencies. 4

This would indicate that parents in Western civilisations are failing to follow the instinctive engagements with their children in the way that earlier parents did. They are, or seem to be, putting their needs before those of their children. This is bringing about a lack of proper development, or at least a delayed development. As a result, researchers such as Logan and Lazarev have to find ways in which they can persuade parents to give their children the sort of attention that they have been lacking. This lack has been accumulating over several generations to the point where it has become established inter-generationally.

Conclusions Some researchers have shown what might be an improvement in the potential of a child by means of dedicated early stimulation. At its applicable minimum this might be a very moderately priced and effective means of helping those whose environmental circumstances might otherwise provide them and their children with little hope for the future. It is a study that must be taken seriously, as any upgrading of abilities in parts of our society can only enhance all of it. One of the difficulties of such courses is the continuing need to educate further those who might benefit from them, and thereby inculcate a positive belief in the outcome. Many parents, and not only those in the third world, find that life poses so many problems that they are content to see each day out without any more added. What is required is a positive approach to this promising avenue of improvement by other members of society who are not so disadvantaged.

1

Evans, Stephen. Report on a study at Keele Univ. The SundayTimes; 22 March 1998. Rossi, A S. On The Reproduction of Mothering: A methodological debate. In Walsh, M.R. [Ed.]; The Psychology of Women. [pp., 268] New Haven, USA & London UK, Yale Univ. Press, 1987. 3 Phillips, E.; & Anderson, A. Developing mathematical power: A case study. Special Issue: Enhancing young children’s lives. Early Child Develop. & Care. 96; [pp., 135-146]; 1993. 4 Mowrer, O.H.; & Kluckhohn, C. Dynamic Theory of Personality. In Hunt, J. McV. Personality and the Behaviour Disorders: A handbook based on experimental and clinical research. Vol. 1. New York, USA, Ronald Press, 1944. 2