Interaction and the Architecture of the Brain
But science tells us enough to establish the close link between stimulating early environments and healthy social, emotional and cognitive development of humans. Not surprisingly, one of the most important ways our environments help shape development is through everyday human interaction. It may be useful to think of this interaction as a sort of mirroring—a back-and-forth, give-and-take process by which adults and babies get in sync with each other. This reciprocal exchange, practiced by virtually anyone who has bonded with a young child, is deeply instinctive and happens to a large degree subconsciously. Indeed, “these kinds of behaviors are hard-wired within our species,” explains Council chairman Jack Shonkoff, dean of Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management, and a pediatrician by training. “It’s biologically set up to happen that way for a very good reason; it’s the basis of human development and learning.”
Importantly, experts say, mirroring happens in a bidirectional way—with the child and adult alternating between action and reaction, taking turns in the roles of “subject” or “mirror.” Such interaction characterizes the way adults instinctively mimic a baby’s facial expressions, coos and gestures, for example. And it can be seen in something as simple as a game of “peek-a-boo,” or in silly wordplay, in which children are exercising their innate curiosity and, ideally, getting positive reinforcement from the adults around them.
For Council member Ross Thompson, a developmental psychologist at the University of California at Davis, this style of interaction is best described as an “emotional duet” between the baby and parent or other loving adult. This goes far beyond the act of merely reflecting each other’s actions. He likens it to a high-stakes card game in which the players take turns “upping the ante by elevating what each other does with instinctive—and enormously valuable—reactions.”
In this metaphorical poker game, an infant makes an opening bid by smiling, for example. The attentive caregiver ups the ante by leaning close and smiling wider. The baby responds by reaching out, gently grasping the adult’s hair. And so on. The same interactive dynamic is at work months later as rudimentary language skills take shape. The baby utters “kuh,” for instance. But more than just mimicking “kuh,” the mother or father responds: “Oh, you want a cookie?”—repeating the word emphatically, thereby reinforcing language and coaxing the child a little further with each exchange.
Interaction and the Development of Thought and Feelings
Developmental science suggests that interactions like these build and shape the baby’s brain architecture in fundamental ways. “It’s all happening quite naturally,” says Thompson, “but it’s providing a really good foundation for the baby’s social, emotional, and self-regulatory development.” More than that, the research demonstrates how this kind of nurturing from attentive, loving adults is linked to innumerable benefits, ranging from enhanced social competence to stronger language development, sharper cognitive skills, enhanced IQ and greater achievement in school.
Scientists studying early development have turned up other fascinating clues about how social interaction may influence the growing brain. A wide literature on language development, for example, has established that babies start life as “language universalists,” able to distinguish the full range of sounds used in the world’s many tongues. In fact, they can differentiate very subtle phonemic differences that adults later can’t distinguish. (Think, for example, of the difficult distinction between “la” and “ra” in Japanese.) “The baby is ready to learn any language at all,” says Thompson, which reflects the developing brain’s remarkable adaptive qualities. “But it’s not very useful to have that capacity endure if you don’t need to speak Swahili.”
to place more emphasis on ensuring that relationships in child care are nurturing, stimulating,
and reliable.
And this is where early interaction is so important. Starting around their sixth month, children become perceptually “tuned in” to the speech they hear in their native language environment. This interaction has a direct effect on the brain by helping the region’s governing auditory skills to home in on the sounds and language we need while discarding the ones we don’t. This evolution happens quickly: By age 1, children have mainly lost their ability to “hear” universally.
Another way in which interaction builds brain architecture can be seen in experiments testing infants’ responses to their own actions. For example, in work by researchers, a string is drawn from a baby’s ankle to a colorful mobile above her head. The researcher leaves the room, invariably to be lured back moments later as the infant giggles and coos with delight: she quickly picks up the connection between her actions and the results. “There’s nothing more evocative to a baby than to perceive that her action has an effect,” explains Ross Thompson. This kind of cause-and-effect interaction with things in their environment—what developmental experts call reciprocity—gives children “a sense of agency,” says Thompson. “Research tells us it’s the earliest form of self-awareness, and a powerful elicitor of positive emotion” in a baby who otherwise feels helpless and passive in the early days of life.
Mothers and Others: the Interplay of Interaction
The science of early childhood development has the most to say about the critical importance of mother-child relationships, but increasingly, evidence supports the great value of a youngster’s interaction with a wide range of loving, attentive adults within the family and beyond. (The members of the Council refer to this constellation of supportive caregivers as a child’s “environment of relationships.”) When these relationships offer warmth, support, and intellectual stimulation, experts say, children develop greater social competence, fewer behavioral problems, and enhanced thinking and reasoning skills in school, among other benefits. Importantly, close attachments like these don’t seem to compromise the parent-child bond; young children instinctively balance these relationships, benefiting from interaction with others while their attachment to their parents remains the most influential and central bond in their lives. (See also the Working Paper, “Children Develop in an Environment of Relationships”.)
For information about commonly used terms in Council publications, see Definitions.