Infant Behavior Research *

An introductory word may be said about the background of our research program. The Clinic of Child Development started on a small scale back in 1911, as part of the New Haven Dispensary. It then functioned as a diagnostic and advisory dinic, dealing chiefly with backward and problem children of school age. But we soon developed a research interest in children of preschool age and considered the possibility of diagnosing mental deficiency and mental deviations in early infancy. From the standpoint of preventive medicine, if for no other reason, it seemed important to define procedures for the clinical detection and the clinical study of the mental status of the infant. A psychological examination of an infant, on the face of it, seems a somewhat fatuous undertaking. It ceases, however, to be so if we adopt a biological view of the mind; if we do not separate the so-called mental factors too sharply from the so-called physical; if we do not make artificial distinctions between clinical psychology and developmental neurology. Even though the infant cannot introspect, even though he cannot give word-of-mouth reply to questions we might ask, he nevertheless has a mental make-up. He has a behavior equipment. He has, or he is, a reaction system which is open to direct, objective study. This reaction system expresses itself in characteristic forms of behavior,-in reflexes, in patterns of posture and locomotion, in perceptual adjustments of eye and hand, in approach, grasp, and manipulation, in gesture and vocalization, in social adaptations. From the moment of birth, the reactions of the infant assume visible and ascertainable patterns. Behavior patterns differentiate and define themselves ontogenetically in the same lawful manner as the chambers of the heart or the ribs of the thorax. They grow. To make the story short, our infancy research attempts a systematic delineation of the patterning of normal human behavior in the