Infant Behavior - Its Genesis And Growth

INFANT BEHAVIOR ITS GENESIS AND GROWTH BY ARNOLD GESELL. PREFACE Investigations as well as infants grow. The present volume has its roots in earlier studies which are briefly outlined in the opening chapter. We must at once acknowledge our indebtedness to earlier associates who helped to set in operation general principles and methods of procedures namely, Mrs. Margaret Cobb Rogers, Miss Elizbeth Evans Lord, Miss Ruth Wendell Washburn, and Dr. Marian Cabot Putnam. Through its diagnostic and advisory service, the clinic has fortunately been able to build up relations of confidence and friendliness in the community. This has resulted in excellent cooperation from the parents of New Haven who, through themselves and through their infants, have made a gener ous contribution to our scientific undertaking. We have benefited in numerous ways from the cooperation of other departments of the School of Medicine and of social agencies, including the Visiting Nurse Association and the Bureau of Vital Statistics. In the home visits and interviews we had the assistance of Miss Glenna Bullis and of several graduate students. We wisti also to make grateful acknowledgment to Miss E. Elizabeth Allis for assistance in the preparation of manuscript. This publication is based upon periodic developmental exami nations of normative infants throughout the first year of life, The stenographic protocols of the observations entailed a large amount of painstaking analysis which was carried through by a group of assistants especially trained and supervised for the task Miss Helena MaHay, Miss Helen Richardson, Miss Charlotte Peck, Miss Georgina Johnson, and Mrs. Harriet Lange Rheingold. Mrs. Esther Upjohn Shipley, over a period of three years, devel oped a detailed familiarity with the data and rendered valuable service in connection with the analysis of the normative cinema records. These records were made with the active cooperation and helpful advice of Professor Henry Marc Halverson, Research Associate in Experimental Psychology, Extensive cinema records, both normative and naturalistic, have been codified in An Atlas of Infant Behavior which portrays in action photographs the forms and early growth of human behavior patterns. The present volume bears an organic relation to vf PREFACE the systematic delineations of the Atlas. A forthcoming volume by the present authors, entitled Norms of Infant Development, will set forth in monographic detail the basic data of the normative survey, the specific procedures used in the developmental examinations, and biometric conclusions and applications. The present volume deals mainly with findings and genetic interpretations. The results of the normative survey are reported in six chapters and sixty sections. Chapter Three, which constitutes the core of the book, summarizes the behavior characteristics displayed in twenty-five different situations, instituted at fifteen age levels from four through fifty-six weeks. The newborn infant was not included in our systematic observations. The period immediately after birth involves medical, nutritional, and environ mental complications and so many highly variable factors that it requires special techniques for adequate study...