The psychology of the neonate: Analysis of sequential-temporal patterns in neonatal behaviour

虽然人类的发展是一个从受孕到死亡的连续成长过程，但我们也认识到不同的发展阶段，如婴儿期、儿童期和青春期。这一阶段的发展观对社会、教育、心理健康和医疗服务的组织产生了实际影响。然而，心理学领域缺乏新生儿(出生前四周的婴儿)的阶段。与心理学家不同，医学专业人士在20世纪中期对这一阶段进行了划分，尽管他们认为新生儿是反应性的，而不是响应性的社会生物。关于新生儿是否具有“社会性”的争论仍在继续，这一争论可能会阻碍该领域认识到新生儿的阶段，也无法探索新生儿的行为。拟议项目使用先前已完成的两个项目的数据库进行二次分析。ESRC RES-000-22-1887调查了133名新生儿的模仿，而ESRC RES-062-23-1779调查了322名新生儿对静止面孔范式的反应。这两个项目都使用了分组设计的统计方法来分析新生儿群体的行为变化。然而，需要一种对时间敏感的方法来解决目前关于“意向性”和“社会性”的争论。在这种区块设计的分析中，忽略了行为元素和事件之间的时间关系，因此不知道个体的反应如何随着时间的推移而演变，它们如何出现在实验者的行为和新生儿的其他反应的背景下。由于获得大量新生儿的机会、描述性分析方法的实验统计困难、大样本与个体描述性分析的需要之间的冲突以及最先进的时间序列工作所需的专业知识，对新生儿行为的这种时间分析以前从未进行过。对这些已经收集的数据集的数据进行二次分析--这可能是迄今为止最大的新生儿行为数据库--提供了一个独特的机会来探索新生儿行为的时间、结构模式和排序规则。该项目旨在分析205名新生儿的视频和部分心率记录。该项目的第一阶段对手臂、手指、面部、嘴巴、眼睛运动、姿势和新生儿的状态(n=40)进行了逐帧描述性的行为分析，然后将这些行为的变化可视化，并解释新出现的模式。阶段2和3包括使用观察者和主题系统(Noldus，2009；Magnusson，2000)和通用顺序查询器(GSEQ)程序(Bakeman&Quera，1995)，在75名新生儿中学习和使用滞后序列分析技术。计算机化的算法将有助于检测行为中的模式，这些模式是以相同顺序重复发生的重复事件集，并且连续部分之间的时间距离在重复过程中相似。阶段4共同分析了行为和心理生理的变化，展示了心理生理数据，包括对静止面孔(n=30)、模仿(n=30)范例和控制条件(n=30)的行为反应。这样的分析还可以解决“唤醒”机制在新生儿对社交环境的反应中可能发挥的作用。阶段5涉及综合量化、定性、行为和心理生理学的结果，并使用多种框架对其进行评估。由此产生的大量数据和新出现的模式可能会改变我们对新生儿和新生儿发育阶段的理解，并对我们如何对待新生儿以及如何为新生儿的父母提供建议产生重大影响。对新生儿行为和反应模式的了解可能会促进具有良好经验基础的“新生儿心理学”的出现。

Although human development is a continuous process of growth from conception to death, distinct developmental stages, such as infancy, childhood and adolescence, are recognised.This stage view of development has had a practical impact on the organisation of social, educational, mental health and medical services. However, the stage for neonates (infants in the first four weeks of life) is absent from the field of psychology. Unlike psychologists, medical professionals demarcated this stage in the mid-twentieth century, although they considered newborns as being reactive, not responsive, social beings. Whether or not newborns are 'social' continues to be debated and the debates might prevent the field from recognising the stage of neonatal, and from exploring the behaviour of the neonate. The proposed project uses the databases of two previously completed projects for secondary analysis. ESRC RES-000-22-1887 investigated imitation in 133 newborn infants, while ESRC RES-062-23-1779 investigated responses to the still face paradigm in 322 neonates. Both projects used a block-designed, statistical approach to analyse the behavioural changes in groups of newborns. However, a temporally sensitive approach is needed to address the current debates on 'intentionality' and 'sociality'. The temporal relationship between the behavioural elements and events are ignored in such block-designed analysis, therefore it is not known how individual responses evolve over time, how they appear in the context of the behaviour of the experimenter and the other responses of the neonate. Such temporal analyses of the behaviour of newborns have not been performed before because of the issues regarding access to a large number of newborns, the experimental-statistical difficulties of the descriptive analytic methods, the conflict between a large sample and the need of individual descriptive analysis, and the expertise that state-of-art time-series work requires.The secondary analysis of data from these already collected datasets-which represent probably the largest neonatal behavioural database to date-provides a unique opportunity to explore the temporal and structural patterns and sequencing rules of the newborns' behaviours.The project aims to analyse video and, in part, heart rate recordings from 205 newborns. Stage 1 of the project employs descriptive, frame-by-frame behavioural analysis of the arm, finger, facial, mouth, eye movements, postural positions and the states of the newborn (n=40), then visualizes the changes of these behaviours and interprets the emerging patterns. Stages 2 and 3 involve learning and employing lag-sequential analytic techniques in 75 newborns using the Observer and the Theme systems (Noldus, 2009; Magnusson, 2000) and the General Sequential Querier (GSEQ) programs (Bakeman & Quera,1995). Computerized algorithms will help detect patterns in the behaviour that are repeated sets of events that occur repeatedly in the same order and in which the temporal distance between the consecutive parts is similar over the repetitions. Stage 4 co-analyses the behavioural and the psychophysiological changes, displaying the psychophysiological data along the behavioural responses to the still face (n=30), the imitation (n=30) paradigms and a control condition (n=30). Such analysis could also address the possible role of 'arousal' mechanisms in the responses of the neonates to social situations. Stage 5 involves integrating the quantitative, qualitative, behavioural and psychophysiological results and evaluating them using multiple frameworks. The resulting wealth of data and the emerging patterns could transform our understanding of the neonate and the neonatal stage of development and have a significant effect on how we treat newborns and how we advise the parents of newborns. The knowledge on patterns of neonatal behaviour and responses might facilitate the emergence of a 'neonatal psychology' with a sound empirical foundation.