States, Behaviors and Cues of Infants

영아의 상태, 행동, 암시

The language of the newborn, like that of adults, is one of gesture, posture, and expression(Lewis, 1980). Helping parents understand and respond to their newborn's cues will make caring for their baby more enjoyable and may well provide the foundation for a communicative bond that will last lifetime. Infant state provides a dynamic pattern reflecting the full behavioral repertoire of the healthy infant(Brazelton, 1973, 1984). States are organized in a predictable emporal sequence and provide a basic classification of conditions that occur over and over again(Wolff, 1987). They are recognized by characteristic behavioral patterns, physiological changes, and infants' level of responsiveness. Most inportantly, however, states provide caregivers a framework for observing and understanding infants' behavior. When parents know how to determine whether their infant is sleep, awake, or drowsy, and they know the implications, recognition of states has for both the infant's behavior and for their caregiving, then a lot of hings about taking care of a newborn become much easier and more rewarding. Most parents have the skills and desire to do what is best for their infant. The skills 7373parents bring to the interaction are: the ability to read their infant's cues: to stimulate the baby through touch, movement, talking, and looking at: and to respond in a contingent manner to the infant's signals. Among the crucial skills infants bring to the interaction are perceptual abilities: hearing and seeing, the capacity to look at another for a period of time, the ability to smile, be consoled, adapt their body to holding or movement, and be regular and predictable in responding. Research demonstrates that the absence of these skills by either partner adversely affects parent-infant interaction and later development. Observing early parent-infant interactions during the hospital stay is important in order to identify parent-infant pairs in need of continued monitoring(Barnard, et al., 1989).