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Biomedical subjects

H Papousek

Publications and source records attributed to H Papousek.

12 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1996

Infant feeding behavior: development in patterns and motivation.

Studies of feeding behaviors in human infants not only provide normative data but also allow analyses of the behavioral regulation. Twenty healthy full-term infants were observed by two examiners and were audiovisually and polygraphically recorded under standard conditions at 2, 10, 18, and 26 weeks of age prior to, during, and after breast- or bottle-feeding. The parameters of sucking, breathing and swallowing significantly changed during the first 6 months of age. At 2 weeks, infants were alert and visually attentive during sucking. Breast-fed infants had more opportunities for intimate social contacts than bottle-fed infants because breast feeding took significantly longer time than bottle feeding. Alert motor activities significantly shifted from the prefeeding to the postfeeding time during the first 6 months of age. Together with an increase in visual exploration and theta index in EEG, this shift seems to relate to developmental changes and interindividual differences in the intrinsic motivation.

Brain↗
PubMed1986

Structure and dynamics of human communication at the beginning of life.

Although the beginning of postpartum social integration and communication has been long viewed as relevant to psychiatric theories, early parent-infant communication has become a matter of scientific investigation only recently. The present survey explains the significance of an approach based upon the general systems theory and explores to what extent the early parent-infant interaction can function as a didactic system to support the development of thought and speech. Evidence of this function has been found in those forms of parental behavior that escape the parent's conscious awareness and control, as exemplified in the vocal communication with presyllabic infants. Parents unknowingly adjust the structure and dynamics of speech to the constraints of infant capacities, detach prosodic musicality from lexical structure, and use it in particularly expressive forms for the delivery of the first prototypical messages. In this and other similar ways, parents offer an abundance of learning situations in which infants can try out various integrative operations. A biological rather than cultural provenience of the support of communicative development indicates a potential relevance for the interpretation of speech evolution. In addition to qualities of the vocal tract and to complex symbolic capacities in humans, the early intuitive support of communicative development and its playful character are suggested as species-specific determinants of speech evolution. Implications for clinical research are suggested.

Communication↗
PubMed1983

Biological basis of social interactions: implications of research for an understanding of behavioural deviance.

Among the infant's initial risks, interactional failures have recently been identified as potential links of vicious circles leading from inconspicuous deviance to severe clinical syndromes. The knowledge of the origins of interactional failure has been insufficient. In this paper a basic explanatory model is presented and two major determinants of successful parent-infant interactions are analysed: the infant's integrative competence and the initial forms of parenting. Particular attention is paid to pre-term infants and the biological roots of parenting.

Humans↗
PubMed1977

Acquisition of appetitional and palpebral conditioned reflexes by the same infants.

The establishment of appetitional and palpebral conditioned reflexes was compared in three groups of 26 infants, 3--150 days old. The age range within each group at the beginning of conditioning was 0--20 days for both methods. The parameters compared were the time to reach equal criteria for the establishment of the conditioned response, and the nature of acquisition. The main results are as follows: (1) appetitional CR was established more quickly than palpebral CR; (2) the relative rates of conditioning in both methods were correlated in the same infants (r = 0.84; P<0.001); (3) the course of conditioning was in striking agreement in infants of the same age, both premature and full-term, for the two applied methods, but different for groups of infants of different ages. The results indicate that two quite different methods yield a picture of differences in the functional capacity of the CNS which are in close agreement with those for age.

Age Factors↗
PubMed1975

Cognitive aspects of preverbal social interaction between human infants and adults.

Our previous studies on learning and on cognitive development in preverbal human infants indicated that motor activity and social interaction played particularly important roles in the cognitive development of infants. Closer analysis has revealed that motor activity and social interaction have some underlying common regulatory mechanisms. These mechanisms can be detected more easily in infants than in older subjects. An attempt to synthesize our observations led us to the concept that there is a fundamental cognitive process in the integration of adaptive behaviour. This concept may help to elucidate the motivational and emotional aspects of social interaction, the role of mothers or other caretakers in their interactions with infants, and the unfavourable effects of early social deprivation of different types on cognitive development. Some of the assumptions on which this concept is based have been corroborated by analyses of adult-infant interaction.

Adaptation, Psychological↗