Sensory deprivation vs. sensory stimulation during early development: a comment on Berkowitz's study.

The findings reported by Berkowitz (1) -are extremely interesting, informative, and consistent with theoretical formulations and experimental results relating sensory deprivation to stimulus-seeking behaviors, (4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10). It is the intention of this comment to suggest that Berkowitz's conclusion (1, p. 192) that "The results as a whole do not support optimal-arousal theory; nor do they fall under the exclusive domain of any other extant theory of the phenomena" is not entirely correct and that his remarks "while the present data favor a deficit-oriented more than an optimal-arousal stance, unilateral application of the former to the infantile experience and/or sensory reinforcement areas is premature" (1, p. 194) is, in fact, not consistent with the early deprivation and stimulation literature. In the references listed above a theoretical formulation has been offered that sensory deprivation during early development leads to stimulus-seeking behaviors that are related to the sensory system that has been deprived; further, that hyperactivity, hyperreactivity, and increased violent-aggressive behaviors commonly reported following maternal-social deprivation in mammals represent forms of stimulus-seeking behaviors which are attributable to somatosensory deprivation and not to deprivation of the other sensory systems. With respect to underlying mediating neural mechanisms, this writer has extended and emphasized the relevance of Cannon's Law of Denervation Supersensitivity (10) in accounting for the neural-behavior effects of early sensory deprivation, as initially observed by Riesen (14). Riesen (11, 12, 13, 14, 15) can be constructively consulted for a thorough analysis of the many aspects of early sensory deprivation upon neural-behavioral ontogeny. Additionally, Cannon and Rosenbleuth (2), Stavraky (17), and Sharpless (16) may be consulted for a thorough and systematic treatment of denervation supersensitivity phenomena. It is the contention of this writer that early experimental