Читать книгу Infants and Children in Context - Tara L. Kuther - Страница 239

Infants can integrate information from multiple senses from birth. Do they process sensory information in similar ways as older children and adults? We cannot be certain of how they make sense of intermodal sensations; however, fMRI research suggests that when very young infants (11–36 days old) are perceiving intermodal stimuli, they show activity in similar sensory regions of the brain as adults (Sours et al., 2017).

Infants are particularly responsive to touch (recall kangaroo care in Chapter 3). When given soft brush strokes to the skin of their leg, 11- to 36-day-old infants show similar neural responses as children and adults in areas linked with sensory, social, and affective processing (Tuulari et al., 2019). Infants’ early sensitivity to touch and its links with socio-affective brain regions may play an important role in development.

Infants’ sensitivity to touch and their ability to integrate auditory with tactile information may aid learning. In one set of studies, researchers examined the integration of tactile and auditory senses in 5- to 7-month-old infants (Lew-Williams, Ferguson, Abu-Zhaya, & Seidl, 2019). Specifically, infants listened to abstract patterns of tones while being touched on the knee or elbow. The infants were more likely to learn auditory sequences when the accompanying touches matched the auditory pattern. The findings suggest that social touch not only arouses infants but also influences how they process stimuli and learn.

Touch, particularly caregivers’ touch, promotes learning. For example, in one study, 4-month-old infants habituated to a face while their forehead was either stroked with a soft paintbrush, stroked by a caregiver, or was not stroked. The infants who were stroked by caregivers looked significantly longer than their peers when shown a new face, suggesting that caregiver touch promoted learning (Della Longa, 2019). Social touch is rewarding and may play a special role in learning, as suggested by a recent study of 7- to 8-month-old infants (Tanaka, Kanakogi, Kawasaki, & Myowa, 2018). In this study, infants heard a short string of syllables while being tickled (multisensory) or while not being tickled. When infants were tickled while listing to the string of syllables, they displayed more brain activity in regions of the brain related to sensory processing and attention than when they listened without being tickled. In addition, the difference in brain activity was related to engagement. When infants showed more engagement, such as laughing, they showed more activity in the sensory and attention regions. Social touch may play a special role in facilitating sensory integration and learning.