Association of Two Congenitally Organized Behavior Patterns in the Newborn: Hand-Mouth Coordination and Looking

Abstract

A previous analysis of 1000 ft. of film of each of 32 full-term 2- to 3-day-old neonates established that there exists a concurrence of alerting and hand-mouth contacting which is significantly greater than could be expected to occur by chance judging from the expected and the actual distribution of these behaviors (Korner & Kraemer, 1972). A frame-by-frame analysis of these concurrences was then undertaken to assess whether there was a predictable direction of causation between these two behaviors. Five types of behavior sequences were observed. The infant's alerting could be viewed as an orienting response to the hand's activity in slightly more than half the sequences. Yet, alerting occurred just before hand-mouth contact almost as frequently as immediately afterwards. Thus, the close temporal proximity of these two behaviors may point primarily to an association of two neonatal behaviors which antecedes the synchronization of these behaviors in later eye-hand coordination.