Peculiar Behaviors of Infants at a Residential Nursery:
A Consideration Based on a Sociological Theory of Body

Akiko Rakugi

Abstract

Over an extended period of observation at a residential nursery, three peculiar
behavior patterns were observed in residential nursery infants: (1) Infants, even though face to face with their own nurse, smile at other nurses some distance away, who are holding and caring for other infants; (2) Concentrated exploratory behavior in which the infants appear to be so engrossed that they do not seem to be aware of the nurse who is caring for them; (3) Infants reacting fearfully towards soft toys (stuffed toys) that other infants would generally find attractive. The findings are discussed from the viewpoint of a sociological theory of body proposed by Osawa (1991). Specifically, two points will be emphasized. First, the formation of the transcendental body is delayed by difficulties in establishing an inter-bodily chain with a specific caregiver and this prolongs the period in which the inversion between centripetal and centrifugal points among different bodies is dominant. Second, mechanical and uniform care in residential nursery tends to provide infants with the tendency to avoid the formation of the transcendental body that overlaps that of the nurses that most frequently care for them.

When they are about 2 to 3 months old, infants start to smile to express pleasurable feelings toward the adults who hold and care for them. About 6 months after birth infants start to move around on their own. While playing with toys and objects around them, the infants still require plenty of physical contact and they frequently look back at the caregiver, usually the mother, who is watching over them. Also, soft toys (stuffed toys) are one of the favorite types of toy for infants at this age and an infant will display increased pleasure when the caregiver uses a soft toy in play with them. These behavior patterns are widely observed when infants are reared in a home environment.

Based on observations conducted over a 6-month period on infants living in a residential nursery,however, the author has encountered three patterns of behavior in this setting that are dissimilar to the previously mentioned behavior patterns that are commonly observed with infants at home: (1) (Around 2?8 months after birth.) Infants smile at nurses some distance away, who are holding and caring for other infants. This is true even when they are being held by their own nurse: the infant smiles at other nurses, some distance away, who are holding and smiling at other infants as if he/she were the center of attention for those nurses. (2) (Around 6?10 months after birth.) Infants engage in continuous play with toys (exploratory behavior), where they appear to be so absorbed that they do not seem to be aware of the nurse who is watching over them. Concentrated exploratory behavior continues while infants show hardly any closeness or emotional expression toward nurses. (3) (Around 8?11 months.) Infants show fear towards soft toys (stuffed toys) that would generally be attractive to other infants. These infants become especially distressed when nurses try to comfort them by using soft toys in play. The present study examines the developmental mechanisms of such behavior from the standpoint of a sociological theory of body.

A Residential Nursery in Japan

I will provide a brief introduction to residential nurseries in Japan, the improvement of child care services accompanied by changes in the concept of hospitalism, and remaining problems that seem inevitable in a residential nursery where typical parent-child relation cannot be expected. A residential nursery is defined in the Child Welfare Act in Japan as a facility in which an infant whose parent cannot provide care is put and reared until the infant becomes two years old. Some infants were deserted by their parent(s) as soon as they were born or before they were two years old. Some were abused by their parent, some were born to young or unwed mothers, or to women who had severe domestic problems that made ordinary child rearing almost impossible.

In Japan, there has been rapid improvement in conditions found in residential nurseries in terms of facilities and the number of caregivers. In 1973, the nurse to infant ratio had improved up to 1.7 nurses per infant. Since then, the child-to-nurse allocation system (a system in which a nurse is assigned to a predetermined group of less than five infants) has gradually become standard practice. These improvements in child care service reflect and are reflected in changes in psychological and medical studies related to infants in child care (Sato, 1991). This becomes apparent by looking at what types of peculiarity in residential nursery infants have been labeled as hospitalism in psychological and medical studies and how the definition of hospitalism has changed.

At the beginning of the century, the term hospitalism originally referred only to physical health conditions such as high mortality rates and stunted growth. Starting from the 1950s, however, a tendency toward mental retardation was added to the recognized peculiarity of stunted physical development (Bowlby, 1969). After the 1970s, when the nurse to infant ratio had been improved to 1.7 to 1, hospitalism referred more specifically to mental retardation and focused on the habits peculiar to institutionalized infants such as rocking and head banging.

At present, the conditions of residential nursery infants have further improved to the point where physical development is no longer a problem and differences in mental development between nursery infants and infants at home are gradually disappearing. For instance the development quotient for residential nursery infants has risen to around 100 and there is evidence that habits that are peculiar to residential nursery infants have been decreasing (Amino et al., 1981). The physical and mental improvement have been achieved by the enrichment of facilities and the increase of child care services. More attention has been paid to the nutrition value of food, sanitary conditions, and the physical and mental development of each infant. In a sense, such services seem more systematic than in an ordinary home. For example, the content of foods and the period of bathing are controlled by the child’s age, although bathing was not provided every day in the past. A test of physical and mental development is carried out periodically to establish a goal that is expected to be attained by each infant.

Nevertheless, the living environment for residential nursery infants is vastly different than that for infants raised at home in the sense that they are nurtured in a group with a large number of other infants and by more than one nurse. The group caring tends to disturb developing intimate relations between an infant and a nurse. Nurses give priority to implementing daily schedules efficiently rather than satisfying physiological and psychological needs of each infant. For example, it is difficult for a nurse to continue to hold an infant until he/she stops crying. A nurse gives milk to each infant one-by-one while the infant is lying on the bed without holding him/her. It is also inevitable for a nurse to bring an infant to a bath regardless of whether or not he/she was sleeping at the time.

The situation in which efficiency should be emphasized tends to affect the attitude of a nurse towards the infants. That is, she tends to identify ‘good’ infants in terms of how well they contribute to efficiency. An infant who demands less care and thus needs less effort from a nurse is likely to be labeled as ‘good’, while an infant who demands more care is likely to be negatively labeled as ‘dependent’ or even ‘selfish’.

Limitation of ‘Mind in a Body’ Paradigm

Relations between an infant and a caregiver have been examined using attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969). The theory assumes that an infant learns to handle signal behaviors that draw caring and other social responses from an adult and to provide feedback information concerning the appropriateness of the adult’s response. For example, the crying of an infant is one of the most typical signal behaviors that is likely to draw response from an adult. Smiling is also a signal behavior that tends to be most effective for maintaining communication that is going on between an infant and an adult.

Several months after birth, an infant begins to show preference for the caregiver who has responded, consistently and appropriately, to his/her signal behaviors. It becomes possible for such a caregiver to induce much more smiling and to stop crying much more quickly than for other adults. In the last half of the first year after birth, an infant’s signal behaviors become integrated and organized centering such on a caregiver, who starts to play a role of ‘secure base’ for the infant and thus becomes an attachment figure. The attachment figure is a person whom an infant approaches to reduce anxiety when, for example, he/she recognizes a danger signal in the environment.

The attachment theory also insists that the relationship between an infant and his/her attachment figure is gradually internalized and is represented as an internal working model that predicts how the figure is going to act on him/her. Recently, some life-span developmental psychologists and social psychologists have suggested that an internal working model is developed in early infancy, which becomes a fundamental information processing mechanism that determines how he/she deals with many interpersonal events after he/she grows further (e.g., Collins & Read, 1990; Hazen & Shaver, 1987).

In recent years, several theories on structural characteristics of representation were proposed that attempted to elaborate Bowlby’s theory of internal working model while being affected by the popularity of social cognition research (e.g., Stern, 1985; Bretherton , 1985; Nelson, 1986) . The theories share the assumption that synchronized interaction like exchange of facial expression between mother and infant, which is still non-verbal and unconscious even for the mother, is stored in the deep part of long term memory.

Here, it should be noted that both the attachment theory and the social cognitive theory are based on a ‘mind in a body’ paradigm. The paradigm assumes that the mind is somewhere in a physical body that is separated from the outside of body by its skin. This assumption is maintained whether the mind is regarded as substance or function. Any reference to information processing in the cognitive psychological sense assumes a system of psychological functions in a body, thus mind in a body, even if many computer metaphors are used.

The ‘mind in a body’ paradigm does not only assume ‘mind’ in a body but also an external, objective world, a part of which is captured by the mind and is projected onto an internal, subjective world in the mind. Cognitive psychology has insisted that the projection is not passive but an active transformation of external stimuli by internal information processing. But, it is still clear that cognitive psychology assumes the distinction between an external objective world and an internal subjective world. Moreover, the distinction is assumed not only by cognitive psychologists, but also by the vast majority of ordinary people. We might be able to say that most people in our society have been bound with a spell of the dichotomy of mind and physical things, that is, of an internal subjective world and an external objective world.

We should remember, here, that the ‘mind in a body’ paradigm and the dichotomy of internal subjective world and external objective world have been severely challenged and almost rejected by developments in philosophy and theoretical sociology in the twentieth century. Literature by Derrida (1967), Foucault (1966), Heidegger (1927), Luhmann (1984), Wittgenstein (1969) and so on indicated a new direction of thought may emancipate us from the spell of the traditional notion of ‘mind in a body’ and to bring about breakthrough in human sciences. Unfortunately, psychologists have not benefited sufficiently from the literature so far. Gergen (1984) assimilated abundant implications of the literature and proposed a new direction that social psychology should pursue, but this direction has not been followed by the mainstream.

Oversight of this literature seems unfortunate especially for social psychologists. It introduces the notion that what has been regarded as acts of mind are nothing other than acts of society, more generally, acts of a collectivity whereby what has been regarded as external and objective cannot exist unless it is woven into a network of meaning that is again produced by society or a collectivity. From the perspective of this literature, social psychology is not just one of many disciplines in psychology. Social psychology has the potential to provide new epistemological explanations on how existents appear as they are in front of ordinary people and even psychologists who still believe that an individual person owns his/her mind in body.

Importantly, however, social psychology cannot fulfill its potential as long as it remains an individual psychology that takes social stimuli into consideration. It is necessary for social psychology to become psychology of ‘thinking society’, to borrow the term from Moscovici (1981). For this, ‘psychology’ in social psychology should not remain a psychology that studies behavior and consciousness of an individual person but should focus on the construction of meaning by society, or a collectivity of persons together with their environments. We might be able to call such a new social psychology as group dynamics if the term would become free from the traditional definition of empirical studies on small groups, and rather defined following Sugiman (1998) as “a field of study in which the dynamic nature of human collectivities or groups is investigated by examining the collectivities as wholes on the one hand, and the dynamic bilateral relations between the collectivity and the lives, or the psychological states, of the individuals who belong to these collectivities on the other” (p. 51)..

The paradigm of new social psychology or new group dynamics differs from the ‘micro-macro’ paradigm that has been emphasized by sociologists (e.g., Alexander & Gissen , 1987). The ‘micro-macro’ paradigm examines social or group phenomena by focusing on dynamic interaction between the two levels, one of which is the macro-scopic structural characteristics of the society or group as a whole and the other of which is the micro-scopic psychological processes in each individual person. Here again, it is easy to find that the paradigm is not different from traditional social psychology in that it assumes internal psychological processes, that is, ‘mind in a body’, although it tries to investigate ‘mind in a body’ by taking the macro level into consideration.

Based on the above, the present study will not rely on traditional developmental or social psychological theories that have been bound with the spell of the ‘mind in a body’ paradigm and will, instead, introduce a new theory. The theory is a sociological theory of body proposed by Japanese sociologist, Masachi Osawa (1991). Before introducing the theory in the next section, it will be useful to state in advance that it should look strange when you read it for the first time at least. This is because the theory was proposed from a totally different standpoint from the ‘mind in a body’ paradigm that has captured us so strongly that we cannot regard remarks from any other paradigm as acceptable.

Osawa’s Sociological Theory of Body.

In Osawa’s theory of body, body is defined as something in front of which something appears, that is, something whose life-world is not nothingness. It is ordinarily said that something appears in front of an individual person who has mind in a body. But, the definition of body is far more loose than the ordinary concept of an individual person. The body defined here never assumes ‘mind in a body’.

It might be good to provide a rough sketch of his theory in this paragraph before going into details of the study. The theory starts by assuming two levels of body, each of which is never a body that has a mind in it, though. The first level of body refers to bodies that are being replaced with each other continuously and therefore bodies that are melted into one like two kinds of gas that are perfectly mixed up. It means that one body becomes another body, which will be referred to as inversion of centripetal and centrifugal points later. It should be noted that the replacement is not experience in which one feels like being other but one literally becomes other. The second level of a body emerges from bodies in the first level. It emerges from the bodies being replaced with each other as if it had already existed prior to the bodies in the first level and indicated to the bodies in the first level how they should be and what something in front of them should be. It is the body in the second level that indicates the meaning of something that appears in front of us. The second level of body is a transcendental body that is constructed by frequent mutual replacement among bodies in the first level. The transcendental body might be called ‘Autre (Other in English)’ by French psychiatrist Lacan (1973). The transcendental body indicates the meaning of an object that the first level of bodies is faced with. Relations between bodies in the first level and a body in the second level parallels the relationship between being something and the meaning of something (i.e., because the meaning of something should have been there before something appears). For example, when you say, ‘Oh, that is a dog’, the meaning, dog, should have already existed before the object appears in front of you. Otherwise, it is impossible for you to make that remark.

One might want to know how ‘body’ in Osawa’s theory is related to our usual notion of a body that is ordinarily believed to contain the mind in it. Here, we should remember that the usual notion of a body is nothing other than the meaning that is given to a specific type of an articulated segment of our life world although the notion is held by the vast majority of people in the world. ‘Mind in a body’ is the meaning that is indicated by a transcendental body that has been constructed by a huge number of bodies in the first level in different cultures and in different ages, especially in modern ages.

The present study will examine the three peculiar behaviors that were observed in a residential nursery by focusing on how a body in the second level tends to emerge from bodies in the first level, in this case, an infant and nurses; it is because the peculiarity of behaviors in a residential nursery is nothing other than the peculiarity of an infant’s life world that consists of many objects whose meanings are indicated by the body in the second level. In the following section, I will refer to Osawa’s theory as far as it is necessary for discussion and then consider each of the three behavior patterns from the standpoint of the theory.

The life of the newborn infant is immanent in the sense that it is an undifferentiated whole where there is no distinction between physical objects and bodies, let alone between self and others. From this primal state intentionality emerges. Here, a term ‘intentionality’, is used in a much broader sense than is ordinarily used and refers to the existence of subject-object relations in which the subject perceives, or acts on, the object. But, it is never assumed by the term that the subject actively perceives or acts on an object that is passive. Rather, active nature, or active operation, is assumed not only on the side of the subject but also on the side of the object as it will be referred to from now on.

One crucial point in regard to the mechanism of intentionality is that twin operations ?centripetal operation and centrifugal operation? are always working simultaneously. The source of centripetal operations (the centripetal point) is on the side of the subject and sets out the object around the current position of the centripetal point. On the other hand, the source of centrifugal operation (the centrifugal point) is on the side of the object and transfers the centripetal point to another place. The simultaneous working of centripetal and centrifugal operations leads to continuous change of the place where centripetal and centrifugal points are located and thus intentionality emerges. Here, the body is defined as a position that can be a centripetal point.

It should be noted that an inversion between centripetal and centrifugal points can occur. This is just a special case of the simultaneous working of centripetal and centrifugal operations. When a centripetal point is transferred by centrifugal operation to the position where the centrifugal point was located, the new centripetal point (i.e., previous centrifugal point) sets out the new centrifugal point (i.e., previous centripetal point) around the position of the new centripetal point.

A remarkable inversion between centripetal and centrifugal points can be observed in infants. A typical empirical example was reported by Kuboda (1981). Here, a 6-month-old infant who, 3 minutes after tasting a lemon for the first time in his life, watched an adult who is about to suck a lemon and then pursed up his lips as if he were experiencing sourness. In this example, the infant actually sensed the sourness at the mouth of the adult licking the lemon (the adult’s mouth was the centripetal point while at the same time the infant’s body was the centrifugal point). In the next moment, however, the infant sensed with his own mouth and pursed his lips (the infant’s mouth was the centripetal point and this time, the adult’s mouth became the centrifugal point).

When the inversion between centripetal and centrifugal points occurs frequently among multiple bodies, the bodies reach the point where they share a certain identical experience. In other words, the identical object is experienced in common by different bodies. The different bodies sharing this common experience of an object are called ‘an inter-bodily chain’. Contagion of crying, that is often observed among more than two babies, is a typical example of what is caused by an inter-bodily chain. Also, entrainment of a mother into her baby (Condon & Sander, 1974) and the conception of the physical figure of the other (Wallon, 1954) can be thought of as being brought about by an inter-bodily chain.

Observation of an inter-bodily chain is not restricted to early developmental phenomena. It is often experienced by ordinary adults although it is expressed depending on the ‘mind in a body’ paradigm. Whenever two persons share intense emotional sympathy with each other, an inter-bodily chain has been developed among them. When two persons are simultaneously frightened by a strange animal, they are in an inter-bodily chain in which one becomes the other bilaterally many times. Also, contagion of yawning is a familiar example of phenomena caused by an inter-bodily chain.

When enough bodies are present in an inter-bodily chain, in which the identical experience is shared intensely, the object can reach the point where it appears as if it had long been there. Furthermore, it appears as if it had long been there for a third-person who is not the same as any specific body in the inter-bodily chain but represents the chain as a whole. This third-person is a transcendental body that is not concrete but abstract, in other words, not visible but invisible to some extent at least. For the transcendental body, the present object is just a specific one of the countless instances that it has been faced in the past and will be faced with in the future.

It is the transcendental body that endows the object with meaning. Meaning has two critical natures, one of which is called logical priority and the other is generality. The logical priority refers to the meaning should exist prior to the appearance of an object that is captured by the meaning. The generality of meaning refers to the nature of meaning that is so general that a countless number of specific instances are referred to by the meaning.

These two natures of meaning are paralleled with the two natures that are owned by the transcendental body which identifies an object with its meaning. The logical priority of meaning is paralleled with the notion that the transcendental body appears as if it had long existed. The generality of meaning is paralleled with the notion that the transcendental body appears as if it had experienced the countless instances which include the present object as a specific instance.

In the case of infants reared at home, it is likely that an inter-bodily chain is often developed among two bodies, a mother and her infant. It follows that a transcendental body is constructed through the inter-bodily chain. The transcendental body is abstract or invisible to some extent. It also overlaps with the body of mother to some extent. The more the transcendental body overlaps with the body of mother, the more things get to appear with meaning.

This explains how it becomes possible for both infant and mother to pay joint attention to an object. Joint attention is made possible by a transcendental body that has been constructed by an inter-bodily chain of an infant and mother and that endows meaning on the object. The object is not necessarily restricted to a physical thing. The space surrounding an infant and mother also becomes an object and is given specific meaning, such as a warm and safe object. Fear of strangers becomes prominent at the age of about eight months when a transcendental body develops enough to give positive meaning to the space that is adjacent to an infant and mother, and, by contrast, negative meaning to the space which extends outside the adjacent space and from which strangers suddenly break into the adjacent space.

A different story from the above would be possible if there were few opportunities to establish an inter-bodily chain between an infant and a adult, and to develop a transcendental body that overlaps with this adult. We can observe such a situation in a residential nursery where it is immensely difficult to provide an adult (nurse) with whom an infant can establish as frequent and deep an inter-bodily chain as is established with an ordinary mother. Observation of infants at a residential nursery will be reported and three peculiar behaviors observed there will be examined from the viewpoint of Osawa’s theory in the following section.

An Observational Study in a Residential Nursery

The subjects in this study were 13 infants in normal health who lived at a particular residential nursery throughout the entire observation period. Their ages, when the study commenced, ranged from new born to 8 months old. The overall development of the infants was extremely good and at first sight it would be difficult to see much difference between them and infants nurtured at home (Rakugi, 1996).

The location was a highly regarded residential nursery in Osaka, Japan, that provides 24-hour care for infants whose families are unable to care for them. The nursery has one of the best reputations in Osaka Prefecture. The study took place between June and December 1992. An observation protocol of 4 hours a day (10:00-15:00, except 12:00-13:00), 5 days a week was adhered to: in total there were about 600 hours of observation. According to the daily schedule, the 4 hours of observation conducted were used for feeding meals or snacks, group-and-individual-play, bathing, and short periods of sleep.

To maintain a normal daily care environment, a participant observation method was employed. In particular, instances of behavior patterns that were deemed peculiar to residential nursery infants were recorded. At the same time, the state of the infant, such as posture (e.g., supine, prone, rolling over on the floor, crawling, sitting), state of awareness (e.g., asleep, awake) and the occurrence and frequency of actions such as smiling, laughing, babbling, sucking, rocking, head banging, as well as exploratory behavior were recorded (Rakugi, 1996).

The overall development of the subjects was excellent. Many infants exceeded the standard development rate seen in infants at home, especially in their postural and motor development. Also, the period for the emergence of emotional expression and exploratory behavior amongst the subjects was no different to infants at home (Rakugi 1996).

Below, I will discuss three peculiar behavior patterns of residential nursery infants that were observed during this study: (1) smiling at other nurses some distance away, who were holding and caring for other infants, (2) concentrated exploratory behavior, and (3) fear of soft toys. Table 1 shows the extent to which the three behavior patterns were observed in each subject.

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1. Smiling at nurses some distance away, who were holding and caring for other infants.

There was a tendency for the social smiling of infants at residential nurseries to be directed towards nurses some distance away, who were holding and caring for other infants, rather than at the particular nurse who was holding and smiling at them. In most cases, infants smiled at nurses some distance away, not the nurse who was caring for him/her. This does not mean that infants never smiled at a nurse who was caring for them. They did. But some infants smiled at a nurse some distance away much more frequently than at the nurse who was holding them. It was not rare, however, to observe that some infants who did not smile at all at the nurse who was feeding them but consistently smiled at nurses who were feeding other infants. Also, it was observed that when the nurse that was caring for a particular infant called the infant's name and tried to get the child's attention by making sounds with toys, the infant did not respond, but would laugh audibly towards nurses some distance away, who were holding other infants. This peculiar smiling behavior was observed among 8 out of 9 infants who had not yet passed the stage in which the behavior pattern could be observed.

This particular smiling behavior was not a response to smiles from other nurses, none of whom were smiling at them from a distance, nor were the infants smiling at especially familiar persons, such as nurses who would normally be in charge of them. Furthermore, infants would smile at the other nurses even when several hours of observation failed to note any instance of the infants smiling at the nurses that were caring for them.

It is important to note that the smiling observed in this study is neither physiological, spontaneous smiling that is generally shown just after birth, nor smiling caused by comfort or intriguing changes in the environment that becomes apparent one or two months after birth. Moreover, the smiling extends beyond the stage in which infants tend to smile at whoever is smiling at them. The infants observed in this study reached the stage in which their smile can be directed at a specific person.

2. Concentrated exploratory behavior

Generally, infants at home tend to show exploratory behavior in the secure space that has been jointly constructed by a mother and her infant. In many cases, exploratory behavior will continue for as long as the infant feels that the mother is not far from them. It is very rare to observe exploratory behavior taking place when an infant is left alone. As Asao (1992) pointed out by using the psychological metaphor of figure-and-ground, an infant’s interest in physical objects is like a figure that emerges from ground that is the infant’s interest in a person.

It was observed in the present study that many infants in residential nursery began to show frequent exploratory behavior when they were 6 months old. It was remarkable, however, that their exploratory behavior was likely to proceed as if they were unaware of the nurse who was watching over them. Nurses often tried to attract an infant’s attention from behind or, in an attempt to positively interact with them, hold and care for them face to face, but infants would continue with their exploratory behavior as if they were oblivious to these attempts. To take an example from my observation, when an infant failed to respond to their name being called while engaged in exploratory behavior, a nurse forcibly took hold of the infant and waved a toy about for the infant to see, but the infant’s attention continued to be fixed only on the toy and the infant did not look at the nurse. Concentrated exploratory behavior of this type was observed in 4 out of 6 infants who had reached the stage in which exploratory behavior is possible.

It was not rare for such concentrated exploratory behavior to continue for nearly an hour. Often this behavior was interrupted by daily routines such as bathing and mealtimes, and it is possible that it may have continued for longer periods. Another relevant observation is that, in some instances, even when all the nurses were absent from the area where the infant was playing, the infant would pay no attention to this and continue playing as if nothing had happened.

3. Fear of soft toys

There was a tendency for infants at the residential nursery to be intimidated by soft toys that infants who were reared at home would generally find appealing. For example, some infants would invariably cry whenever soft toys were brought near them and would retreat to a place where they no longer could see the toy. Or, when a nurse held out a soft toy and waved it around in front of an infant, the infant became extremely upset and cried for 40 minutes. Seven out of the 10 infants who were over 8 months old displayed such a fear of soft toys.

In many cases, the soft toys had previously been subject to the infant's exploratory behavior on numerous occasions. But, one day, without warning, the infant would start to fear soft toys. This was more often triggered when a nurse waved the soft toy in front of the infant rather than when the toy was left lying motionless beside them.

The fear of soft toys observed in this study is similar in nature to the fear of strangers that is manifest at around the same time. Many of the infants that developed a fear of soft toys in the study also developed a fear of strangers at around the same time.

There also seems to be a relationship between an infant's fear of soft toys and their concentrated exploratory behavior. That is, four infants (C, E, I, J) who showed concentrated exploratory behavior also feared soft toys. Neither infant F nor infant G showed totally concentrated exploratory behavior. Even during exploratory behavior, they shared plenty of emotional exchanges with the nurses and, when the nurse was absent, the infants ceased their exploratory behavior and looked for the nurse. They tended to have a fear of strangers but they did not have a fear of soft toys. They were actually very partial to play involving soft toys.

Infants who did not display a fear of soft toys were the exceptions, however, among the residential nursery infants. The author was surprised to find that the nurses who worked at the residential nursery regarded the infants' fear of soft toys to be an indication of the emergence of the concept of fear. That is, the fear of soft toys had been observed so frequently in the residential nursery that the nurses regarded it as a natural stage in a normal developmental process.

Interpretations from the Viewpoint of Osawa’s Theory

In the following section, the three peculiar patterns of behavior found in residential nursery infants will be discussed from the standpoint of the theory mentioned above. Specifically, two points will be emphasized. First, the formation of a transcendental body is delayed by the difficulties in establishing an inter-bodily chain between an infant and a specific caregiver and this prolongs the period in which the inversion between centripetal and centrifugal points among different bodies is dominant. Second, mechanical and uniform care in residential nursery tends to provide infants with the tendency to avoid the formation of a transcendental body that overlaps that of the nurses that most frequently care for them.

To aid understanding of the second point, i.e., the tendency for infants to avoid the formation of a transcendental body, it is apposite to make some brief comments regarding the practicalities of nursery care. Owing to the need to provide care for a large number of infants using a limited number of staff, there is a tendency for residential nurseries to adhere to efficient care schedules that are regimented by time. Under such conditions, even for infants of 1 to 2 months, mechanical and uniform care is unavoidable, including that related to feeding, changing of diapers, bathing, dressing, and so on. As a result, infants are sometimes suddenly woken up for feeding while they are sleeping and at other times they are unable to receive milk when they are hungry; in an institutional setting there are numerous occasions when caregivers cannot adequately respond to, and even have to ignore the innate needs of the infants under their care. Infants tend to reject repeatedly uncomfortable situations that are set down in the field of their experience and consequently avoid the nurse whom a transcendental body might overlap. The situation is likely to tip the infants towards remaining at the comfortable level where all bodies can fuse together in the inversion between centripetal and centrifugal points.

1. Infant smiles at a nurse some distance away, who is holding and caring for another infant

The first point to make about this phenomenon is that it is a good indication of the stage where the inversion between centripetal and centrifugal points is dominant. The infant perceives smiling at the position (there), where the body of the infant that is being hugged and smiled at by the other nurse, and immediately after, the infant embodies smiling at the position (here) of the infant's own body. At this time the infant perceives both the experience of the position of the other infant (there) and the experience of their own position (here) as interchangeable, and indistinguishable.

Secondly, it should not be overlooked that infants do not only smile at other nurses some distance away but also seem to ignore the nurse who is holding and caring for them. This shows that infants avoid contact with the nurse who is looking after them and who appears before them as a body bearing transcendentality while remaining stuck at the level in which the inversion between centripetal and centrifugal points frequently occurs.

In contrast, for infants reared in at home, the mother is normally gently formed into the bearer of the transcendental body starting after the birth. Stern (1985) argued that the mother is the existence that adjusts the level of excitement and arousal of the infant according to the circumstances. The mother becomes such existence through the process in which she is a body that the infant can fuse with and also gradually come to overlap a transcendental body that emerges from the fusion.

Even at its very initiation the transcendental body wraps the infant and mother in a narrow safe space distinguished from the vast beyond which is a space that holds no guarantee of safety. This discrimination of space is reflected in the meanings given to elements of space. Namely, the meaning of the mother's smile within the safe space is an assurance of its safety, and further reinforces the safe character for this safe space. This is why infants at home so naturally respond to the smile of their mother in front of them with a smile, and why, furthermore, when there are sets of infants and mothers nearby, they do not smile at the other mothers.

2. Concentrated exploratory behavior

Concentrated exploratory behavior also indicates that the infants are at the stage where the inversion between centripetal and centrifugal points is dominant, and therefore at the level just before they can discern objects and bodies. At this stage, it is very likely that an infant and a toy are so fused that they are interchangeable and indistinguishable, in the same way that, as described above, there is an inversion of the infant with the nurse some distance away. This may also explain why, when such an infant is engaged in exploratory behavior, his/her face hardly exhibits any expression except frowning: the infant is trying to reproduce the toy's expression in the frowning.

The distinction between objects and bodies becomes possible through the process of the infant fusing with the object of recognition and reproducing it. This is what Wallon (1954) described as the conception of the physical figure of the other. An infant gazing at a pigeon, for example, unconsciously tries to animate the movements of the pigeon-- making a part of the world in which the conception of a figure is so difficult that it becomes segmented as a physical thing.

For infants reared in a home environment, the attributes of things are made more familiar for infants not only through direct interchange between things and an infant but also through the formation of a transcendental body that is embodied in the mother and gives meaning to them. For infants at home, toys exist in the relationship of the infant and mother, but this specific dimension of existence is missing for residential nursery infants. Even though a nurse is present beside the infant and the toy, infants tend to avoid a transcendental body overlapping the nurse as explained above. Consequently, they have no way to identify something with an physical object other than repeating trial-and-error of reproduction of its expression. It is not surprising that they frown at a toy, if they are reproducing the expression of toys, such as a car, building blocks, etc..

3. Fear of soft toys

From the viewpoint of the sociological theory of body, this response is considered to arise out of the separation of objects and bodies, and the differentiation between self and others. It is important to note that soft toys can be considered either as undemarcated objects that are body-like, or as undemarcated bodies that are object-like. There is a huge difference, however, when soft toys appear as 'things' which are body-like and when they appear as 'bodies' which are object-like. In the main, for infants reared at home, soft toys tend to be things closer to bodies, while in for residential nursery infants they tend to be bodies closer to objects. In most cases at home, a soft toy is initially given meaning as a thing, a lovely thing by a transcendental body that overlaps with the mother, ultimately becoming an object that is treated as if it were a member of the family.

Even for residential nursery infants, the differentiation between bodies and things ?and further differentiation of bodies toward self and others? has started at around this period, i.e., 8 months after birth, although such differentiation begins to show at home about 6 months after birth. It should be noted that, accompanying this concern with differentiation, a fear of strangers also develops, which is directed toward persons who are outside the small but intimate, internal world at whose center is the mother. For residential nursery infants at this period, a soft toy has not yet been given meaning as a thing and is still a body that resembles a thing, while a body that is located in the non-intimate, external world tends to be a subject of fear. Consequently, it might be that the fear response that was observed in the present study was not directed at the soft toy as a thing, rather it was directed at the soft toy as a stranger, a body outside the intimate, internal world. If this is so, the observation that the infants displayed a stronger fear response when the nurses waved the toy around in front of them would be natural, since it would seem like a stranger who is threatening them.

In the above interpretation, the three peculiar behaviors that were observed in a residential nursery were found to be closely related to each other. Difficulties in establishing an intense and frequent inter-bodily chain between an infant and a special caregiver tended to prolong the period in which the inversion between centripetal and centrifugal points among different bodies is dominant and thus cause a delay in the of construction of a transcendental body. Smiling at a nurse some distance away is considered to reflect the continuing inversion of centripetal and centrifugal points between two bodies, an infant and a nurse some distance away, and a lack of transcendental body that could overlap a nurse who is holding the infant. Concentrated exploratory behavior also reflects the inversion of centripetal and centrifugal points between two bodies, an infant and an explored object, and lack of transcendentality that could overlap a nurse who is located just beside the infant. Finally, fear of soft toys is considered to be caused by undetermined nature of the toy that is not yet given the meaning as a thing but is still a body, which again reflects a lack of, or immature level of, transcendental body that could indicate a meaning.

As already stated, the residential nurseries of today are fulfilling their role as far as the quantitative aspects of nursing are concerned. But issues arising from the difference between the nature of a collectivity consisted of mother and infant in the setting of an ordinary home, and the nature of a collectivity in which an infant is cared for by an unspecified number of nurses, still remain. The three peculiar behavior patterns observed in the present study are interpreted as arising out of the characteristics of the collectivity that consists of infants and nurses in a residential nursery.

The study has suggested that the way in which the living world of an infant is formed is through the collectivity consisting of the infant and caregiver(s). Mundane phenomena such as smiling with the mother holding the infant, playing with toys while the mother is looking on, and attachment to soft toys do not merely reflect the normal development of the infant as an individual but take place within a small collectivity where transcendentality is developed by the interaction between infant and caregiver(s).

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Table 1

Display of three behaviors by infants at a residential nursery


Note. (a) Not observed because infants had already passed the stage in which the behavior pattern was shown. (b) Not observed because infants did not reach the stage in which the behavior pattern is generally shown. (c) Not observed because observation period was too short (less than one month). (d) Not observed because any exploratory (playing with toys) behaviors were not shown. (e) Infants showed behaviors that were similar to infants at home.

Bibliograpy

Akiko Rakugi was born in 1961 in Okayama, Japan. She received her B.A. in psychology from Doshisha University. She worked as a research assistant at the division of psychology at Doshisha University and Osaka University for four years before entering a graduate school of Kansai University. Her research interest has shifted from leadership studies to developmental psychology, focusing especially on infant-mother relations after the birth of her first baby. In order to understand the essence of the infant-mother relationship, she has conducted behavioral observations of infants at residential nurseries where there are no infant-mother relations. Since finishing her doctoral course, she has worked as a lecturer at Naniwa college and as a psychological counselor at official health centers. She is married and lives with a son and a little daughter.