Читать книгу Lifespan Development - Tara L. Kuther - Страница 225

Compared with vision and hearing, we know much less about the sense of touch in infants. In early infancy, touch, especially with the mouth, is a critical means of learning about the world (Piaget, 1936/1952). The mouth is the first part of the body to show sensitivity to touch prenatally and remains one of the most sensitive areas to touch after birth.

Touch, specifically a caregiver’s massage, can reduce stress responses in preterm and full-term neonates and is associated with weight gain in newborns (Diego et al., 2007; Hernandez-Reif, Diego, & Field, 2007). Skin-to-skin contact with a caregiver, as in kangaroo care (see Chapter 3), has an analgesic effect, reducing infants’ pain response to being stuck with a needle for blood testing (de Sousa Freire, Santos Garcia, & Carvalho Lamy, 2008; Ferber & Makhoul, 2008). Although it was once believed that newborns were too immature to feel pain, we now know that the capacity to feel pain develops even before birth; by at least the 30th week of gestation, a fetus responds to a pain stimulus (Benatar & Benatar, 2003). The neonate’s capacity to feel pain has influenced debates about infant circumcision, as discussed in the Lives in Context feature.