I've spent many years studying children's behavior, trying to better understand how "nature" and "nurture" impact human development and the role of social experience on brain development. Some of this science is featured in the upcoming PBS series, This Emotional Life (airing next week, January fourth through sixth on PBS).
In a relatively short period of time, our society has radically shifted our collective view of childhood--just over a generation ago, the maxim was that children "should be seen and not heard," reflecting relatively little interest in early childhood. Now a great deal of media attention, marketing, and adult conversation is centered about questions regarding the best approaches to parenting. This is a double-edged sword. In some ways, parenting has become a competitive sport, with adult's perceptions of their own competence too closely tied to their children's performance. On the other hand, it does appear to be the case that early childhood is important for human development, and adult attention to the needs of children has lead to improvements in children's health and education. As a scientist, I spend a lot of time studying how and what children are learning as they interact with their parents and others.
The hot button issue in child development concerns what is "innate" or what sorts of information, traits, and tendencies are already in our brains from the moment we are born. The idea that we enter the world with lots of skills and knowledge is an old and very attractive idea. But my own view is more of a vanilla ice-cream approach. Rather than lots of fancy features, it is likely that what humans enter the world with is a general ability to learn. We have an amazing ability to be able to pick up on various things that are happening in the environment and remember them and group them together. As a result of these very, very powerful abilities to learn, what we're able to do is master lots of different complex behaviors--reading emotions, understanding basic physics, decoding language. If human infants are indeed born with highly effective learning abilities, when we're interacting with our children we are teaching them.
When we are forming our earliest relationships, such as forming social bonds or attachments -- what we are doing is learning. We are learning how to signal to others when we need help for hunger or pain or fear; we are learning who responds to our needs, and how consistently those people respond. As we become older, we learn more complex social cues: what makes other people upset; what makes them comforted; what will result in punishment; what will result in reward. I believe that our brains are born ready to learn about emotional cues...but all that learning depends upon the kinds and quality of social experiences that we have had. These experiences turn on different sets of genes, tune our attention to different aspects of our social world, and imbue our experiences with meaning.
So as a parent I try and step back and ask myself whether I am making these learning experiences clear to my children. Am I being consistent? Have I tried to show my children a clear link between what they have done and why I am upset? Social life is very complex for young children. It can be very easy for adults to forget that they are trying to learn based upon very little information...sort of like trying to communicate in a second language: it helps when people speak slowly and clearly and simply at first.
The big picture is that children are very active learners. Learning does not mean just numbers and letters. It also means learning about relationships. We have to learn how to communicate to others how we feel, how to read the signals that others are sending to us ... and even more daunting, how to regulate our feelings and behaviors when interacting with others. The building blocks of complex emotions such as love stem from this type of back and forth between two people, parent and child. Being able to recognize what somebody else is feeling, recognize that your needs are met, recognize that you've met somebody else's needs. This interplay is really at the core of a reciprocal relationship.
As a parent, what I try to do is to use situations as moments to help children master social communication, love, understanding, empathy because these are not things we are born with, they are skills that emerge with practice. Do I do this all the time? When we are late for school, and the lunches are not made, and the kids want a cereal that we've run out of, no one is putting on their snow pants, and a glove is missing, and I have not had my morning coffee well, that's not so much a teachable moment as it is just trying to make it through the moment.
Mark Matousek: How the Gift of Gab Saved the Human Race
This Emotional Life | Premiering January 4, 2010
This Emotional Life | This Emotional Life - Premiering January 4, 2010
The Emotional Life of the Heart | Psychology Today
Therese Borchard: PBS' 'This Emotional Life': An Intellectual Odyssey
Dr. Xavier Amador: PBS' 'This Emotional Life': Relationships Of ...
PBS' 'This Emotional Life': Relationships Of Mutual Giving
PBS' 'This Emotional Life': My Transformation From High School Drop Out To Surgeon
This Emotional Life: My Life As A POW
Times to Remember, Places to Forget
'This Emotional Life': 'Television at its best' - TV show, social support ...
Paula Bloom Psy.D. | This Emotional Life - Premiering January 4, 2010
Sorting out the good from the bad | This Emotional Life | PBS Video
But the PBS bio repeats the error of omission that Davidson routinely makes in his public lectures. A portion of his work involves the study of fear. He and his colleagues at the university, Ned Kalin and Steve Shelton, have discovered a subset of rhesus macaques who are highly anxious and easily frightened.
They use young monkeys with this trait in experiments on fear. They frighten these young monkeys, then damage various parts of their brains with either electrocautery or injections of a neurotoxin (ibotenic acid) and then subject them to the same fearful experiences and attempt to quantify any difference in their behavior.
Aside from the immense ethical issues raised by their work, it calls into question whether meditation of the sort studied and practicied by Davidson actually influences one's compassion and moods.
The world we live in is a complex one, and our own advanced cognition & complex socialization creates a huge number of channels for instincts and learning to evolve.
Mazlo's hierarchy is an easy way to visualize a number of the needs we seek to satisfy, with a universe of possible solutions attached to every need.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs
In addition to our individual selves, we also have instincts as members of a family, community and species.
We have got a lot going on.
FYI: I have been working for several years on developing models of play and AI behaviors, thats what got me looking into these areas. Human behaviors are fascinating!
The real issue appears to be the detrimental influence of modern "learning" that conflicts with instinct, causing humans to unlearn inborn traits. The goal of parents might be focused on reinforcement of instinctual behavior, rather than overlaying modern societal norms that distance us from our inherent natural behavior.
For research in this area, I recommend "The Age of Empathy" and "Primates and Philosophers" by Frans de Waal.
By analogy, my research in the field of zoopharmacognosy (animal self healing) has persuaded me that wellness-supporting behavior is also instinctual, but has been totally distorted by our modern concept of health care. For research in this area, see "The Wellness Project."
Roy Mankovitz, Director
http://www.MontecitoWellness.com
"Man is a thinking reed, but his great works are done when he is not calculating and thinking. “Childlikeness” has to be restored with long years of training in the art of self-forgetfulness. When this is attained, man thinks, yet he does not think. He thinks like the showers coming down from the sky; he thinks like the waves rolling on the ocean; he thinks like the stars illuminating the heavens. Indeed he is the showers, the ocean, the stars."
As a child we are able to act like dr. Suzuki said. It is sad to see that only our wise men and women are able to learn this again with great effort.
I don't know what to say in regards to your comment, but I thank you for it.
I share none of your credentials.
However, as an intelligent creature, I observe my environment (both inner and outer) and have formed certain conclusions - some bedrock, some which are tenuous and may change with the influx of new information.
I'll just say that it has long struck me that the Age of Reason brought with it a cognitive dissonance which severed us from that innate knowledge we carried previous.
It is long past time that what we know of ourselves innately and what we have learned scientifically merged for the good of all, rather than the two remain severed by the long war between science and religion.
Thank you.
Now, my favorite meditation is the Tao Te Ching. When I read it the first time, it just reinforced all these things I was already discovering on my own (with help from psychadelics). It was so comforting to see the words written by one of the first and great philosopher/spiritualist. Thinking about it makes the body of work seem humanly innate.
Apparently, there's nothing to share.