Abstracts of 2005 Award Winners' Papers:

A Phenomenological Reflection on Infant Research

James L. Yu, MA
Duquesne University

Recent developments in infant research have inspired several psychologists (e.g. Beebe & Lachman, 2002; Sander, 1977; Stern, 1985) to revisit what is considered historically as a very difficult question in psychology: what is the infant's world like? Some of these efforts represent a liberation from interpreting empirical data based on behavioral theories and cognitive models: a shift from the realm of quantification, contingency and determinism, to relatively depthful and somewhat phenomenological approaches.

In this paper, research data on infant perception are re-examined and the interpretations are "bracketed" for critique, reinterpretation, and elaboration. The portrayal of an infant as a "natural scientist", i.e. an experimenter who at birth immediately launches an investigation of the world, purposefully anticipating and controlling external events, is a central theme in these interpretations. Such a theme implies a dualistic world in which the infant is inherently and essentially estranged from the world. Inspired by several contemporary psychoanalytic scholars (i.e. Aron, 1996; Stolorow, Atwood & Orange, 2002), the author similarly points out the fallacies of Cartesian dualism in the field of infant psychology. Furthermore, in elaborating Werner's developmental theory and Merleau-Ponty's notion of the "lived-body", the author proposes an inherent relatedness between the infant's body and his or her surrounding world by approaching these data from phenomenological-hermeneutic perspective, which takes in account the phenomenology of embodiment as well as hermeneutic, experience-near reading of research results.

The author first clarifies the meaning of what he calls the infant's total bodily engagement with the world by introducing a few theoretical concepts from Werner and Merleau-Ponty. Werner posits that infants hardly experience an outside world differentiated from their own immediate actions, sensations and feelings/emotions. The infant is believed to be much more in touch with his "introspective body", in Merleau-Ponty's term, to the extent that "vitality affects" (Stern, 1985) are essential to her/her sense of being-in-the-world. And this introceptive body represents what he calls a total body: it is not an isolated unit, but a "body-subject" inherently turned into the world—a body-world, so to speak.

The author then addresses the notion of intersubjectivity in infancy, which can be traced back to Edmund Husserl's "transcendental intersubjectivity"—the primordial, pre-verbal, and pre-reflected sense of others, an inherent awareness of that which is "on hand" for us, regardless if it is immediately present in our field of perception or not. Intersubjectivity also points to the ontology of human consciousness, as Merleau-Ponty said "the subject is his body, his world, and his situation, by a sort of exchange" (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, p. 72). Research data indicative of human intersubjectivity can be dated back to a few decades ago. After Chevalnier-Skolnikoff's discovery that monkey's interactions were marked by split-second facial/visual exchanges (1976), researchers also found similar mechanism in the facial exchanges between human lovers (Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1970). This split-second mechanism is also found in mother-infant interactions, and can be understood in the context of bidirectional co-regulation (Beebe & Lachman, 2002), a concept that renders inadequate the clear-cut distinction between subject and object in comprehending this phenomenon.

Interestingly, even before the infant participates in such vigorous facial exchanges with others, research has shown that the infant's body is endowed with an innate capacity to engage with others as well as his surroundings in meaningful manners. In one study, infants as young as 42-minute-old were proven to be capable of imitating the facial expressions of any adults (Meltzoff, 1985, 1990). In another experiment, infants were shown to be capable to identify the pacifier they just sucked on blindfolded (Meltzoff & Borton, 1979). Davison and Fox (1982) showed that positive neurochemical affect was activated in infants as evidenced in the EGG scan, when visually exposed to a video of a laughing actress; likewise, the EGG scan showed that negative affect was generated while infants were watching a video of a crying actress. This study shows that the perception of emotional contents from others generates a resonant neuro-affective state in the infants. These innate mechanisms that characterize the earliest form of human interaction and perception suggest an inherent relatedness between the infant's body and his world, presenting a major challenge to the Cartesian point of view.

Reexamining observational data from a non-dualistic perspective, the author then attempts to "bracket" some of the terms that are often used by researchers to describe the infant, including "preference", "ability to discriminate", "manipulate", and so forth. He speaks of an experience-near language to account for several experiment, suggesting that these data speak neither to the "ability to discriminate" nor the infant's "preference", but to the infant's inherent attunement and attachment to the surroundings that begin even before birth. The learning that took place in these experiments was grounded in the infant's total bodily engagement with the world, and not in cognitive manipulation of learned schemata.

The author continues his argument by presenting a phenomenological view on two selected experiments, suggesting that body and objects are continuous experiential categories in the infant's perceptual horizon—they are all "flesh" of the world, as Merleau-Ponty would say. This is also similar to what Kohut calls the self-object, which is the object with which one experiences oneself; it's neither outside nor inside, neither controlling nor being controlled by the infant.

The author concludes by showing appreciation for the recent developments in infant research. Most of the designs, methodologically speaking, are carefully and brilliantly carried out. The major problem with empirical research on infants is not that of the designs per se—although they certainly bear ethical and theoretical shortcomings. However, interpretations were often made with little awareness about and reflections on the researchers' presuppositions—on both theoretical and cultural levels. This project aims to "bracket" some of these interpretations and point out the Cartesian shadows attached to them. In turn, the author attempts to account for these data with a phenomenological and experience-near language, resuscitating a respect for the lived-body in our understanding of infant experiences.