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.