Infant cognitive development
Infant and toddler research is an area in developmental psychology. As far as (eg preemies ) is medically relevant problem cases, even medical research groups of clinical pediatrics are active in it.
Research subject
Research on infants and toddlers includes the age range from birth, with the prenatal phase is involved, until the end of the second or third year of life. In the English, from which the most research, this phase is called Infancy. Topics include the interaction diagnosis, early diagnosis, early intervention and the development of diagnostics. As an important representative Margaret Mahler, Martin mandrel, Jean Piaget and Daniel Stern apply.
Since the developmental psychologists have discovered that even a newborn in no way a " blank slate " but an individual with many plants and prenatal influence embossing is featured little man, it has given the world many studies in this subject area. Chinese researchers in Hong Kong, for example, discovered that even very young infants were embossed on the articulation of parental language and revealed pronounced ability to discriminate between English and Chinese speakers.
Psychoanalytic influences
Psychoanalysis saw a special meaning in the first few years of development since its inception. Since the dawn of empirical observation of infants by psychoanalytic researchers such as René A. Spitz, Margaret Mahler or binding researchers a modern approach in the infant observation or neonatology could be developed by new methods. Since the 1970s, psychoanalysts explore in particular the interpersonal interactions between mother and child. To this end, they use new ways of video technology, to make the often played out in microseconds end mutual adjustment of behavior in the facial expressions and gestures between mother and child explorable.
These are, above all, the "baby -watcher ": Daniel Stern, who explores the origins of the sense of self, Robert N. Emde, who observed the basic emotions of man, Joseph D. Lichtenberg, who examined the needs of young children, and Beatrice Beebe, who has studied the interaction between infants and their caregivers. The neonatal research approach was mainly known in German territory by Martin mandrel.
The results of infant research have exerted a great influence on the psychological and psychoanalytic developmental psychology. It also cognitivist research results for the foundation of new psychoanalytic theories were included. The results of the research allow the development of psychology today assume that an infant not, as often assumed, an uninvolved recipient of the care of the caregivers is. Today the psychology assumes that the infant with only a few weeks is an active, professional, seeking contact and interaction stimulating nature. The decisive factor here is the addition of object relations theory observations of the 1950s and 60s. The interaction between child and mother, which may have an impact on the subsequent therapeutic interaction is no longer viewed as one-sided, by the caregiver certain process. Today must be assumed that a complex reciprocal, ie reciprocal, communication strongly influences the emotions of the child and its being as well as the possibility of their regulation.
This fact is of great importance for psychoanalytic theory, as was often closed by pathological conditions in adult patients in similar conditions in childhood. Today, it is one of the competent infant, who by no means has to go through pathogenic phases. Pathologically relevant derailment of the parent -child dialogue are accessible in contemporary psychotherapy and psychoanalysis early childhood also due to the psychoanalytic and attachment research a more sophisticated methodology.
Scientists can also be expected that deal to the study of neuropsychology and neurophysiology, and rely on modern methods for studying the functioning of the brain, such as new imaging techniques to this development. This attempt to connect psychoanalytic theories and insights arising from neuroscience to socialize and relate their findings in part to the changes in psychoanalytic theory.