March 27, 1988
MIND/BODY/HEALTH; FRESH FROM THE BOOMY, BUMPY WOMB
By PERRI KLASS; PERRI KLASS IS A RESIDENT IN PEDIATRICS. HER MOST RECENT BOOK IS ''A NOT ENTIRELY BENIGN PROCEDURE: FOUR YEARS AS A MEDICAL STUDENT.''
THE WORLD OF THE NEWBORN By Daphne Maurer and Charles Maurer. Illustrated. 293 pp. New York: Basic Books. $20.95.
It is not always easy to study newborn babies. Many of the classic studies, on which we still rely to understand development, have been done on skewed populations of babies; the effects of sensory deprivation, for example, are often inferred from observations of institutionalized babies. Few parents, one imagines, would gladly consent to have their newborn infants tested with noxious stimuli, or deprived of any of the usual accouterments of happy normal infancy. The newborn baby thus remains an intensely observed but somewhat obscure being. Daphne Maurer and Charles Maurer, in ''The World of the Newborn,'' attempt to build a coherent picture of the newborn infant's sensorium, to show us what the world looks like, feels like, tastes like, sounds like to a nervous system newly emerged from the womb.
Actually, the book begins within the womb. The Maurers - she teaches psychology at McMaster University in Ontario, he is a science writer - are most successful when they succeed in prompting the reader to stop and wonder: what does the womb taste like? how loud are the noises a fetus hears? They argue that far from the peaceful, secure haven we imagine, the womb can be ''boomy, bumpy, unsettling, and foul tasting.''
They go on to follow the newborn baby through the upheaval of birth, and then to consider, one by one, the newborn infant's ways of experiencing the world; they move from the specifics of taste, sight and sound into a consideration of the infant's consciousness. In all of these areas, they try scrupulously to avoid the pitfall of projecting adult sensibilities upon the baby; just because you have documented that a baby has the physiological capacity to register certain stimuli does not mean that the baby then perceives them as an adult would - which leads to the question of consciousness.
The Maurers' theory about a newborn's consciousness is that the baby, dependent on perceptions of the world but with no knowledge of the world to correlate with them, lives largely in a looking-glass environment that is the inverse of our own. They offer, as an analogy, an observer on a flying horse, moving at close to the speed of light, who sees the world apparently moving past: ''Of course, you as an adult identify this moving world as composed of trees and fields. You remember that trees and fields usually are stationary and are too substantial to move, so you deduce that they are still stationary and that you yourself are moving. . . . But if you had never seen nor heard about trees and fields -if you were newly born - then you would not deduce this. Instead you would accept your direct observation, that the trees and fields are moving. . . . If you overtook another flying object, like a helicopter, you would think that the helicopter is moving slower than the trees and field; for since both of you would be moving in the same direction, you would take longer to pass the helicopter than you would take to pass the trees.''
This analogy leads us further and further into the mind of the newborn, whose developing nervous system picks up information from an unknown world; the Maurers posit an ''observer'' within the newborn's brain, an observer that constitutes the rudimentary ''awareness'' of the baby, for whom the speed of neurologic transmission is the limitation of velocity, analogous to the speed of light. This analogy is at times difficult to follow, but it leads the authors into complex and tantalizing constructions of the baby's sensorium.
In detailing the complex and often ingenious experiments that have allowed scientists to tease out the elements of this process, the Maurers are scrupulous about the limitations of the studies they cite. This is not a book that presents scientific facts to dazzle the lay reader; instead the authors consistently explain the process by which their assumptions were derived, and they go out of their way to explain why some studies are flawed, however interesting, why others cannot be extended. Sections of this book could serve as a primer on how to read scientific articles (or news stories about scientific ''discoveries''), and this not only makes absorbing reading, but also lends authority to what is of necessity a highly speculative book.
It is also fascinating to follow the details of some of the classic experiments; it is a truism, for example, that very young children will choose a healthy diet if left to themselves, but I had never read the particulars of Clara Davis's 1928 experiments in which a buffet of food was set out for 8- and 9-month-old babies, who indicated their preferences by pointing or grabbing, and made up rather unorthodox menus for themselves (''breakfast might be liver and a pint of orange juice,'') but contrived to get all the necessary nutrients - somehow taste coordinated with nutritional need.
The newborn's world, the Maurers argue, is a world of synesthesia, of confusion of the senses. ''His world smells to him much as our world smells to us, but he does not perceive odors as coming through his nose alone. He hears odors, and sees odors, and feels them too. His world is a melee of pungent aromas - and pungent sounds, and bitter-smelling sounds, and sweet-smelling sights, and sour-smelling pressures against the skin. If we could visit the newborn's world, we would think ourselves inside a hallucinogenic perfumery.''
The Maurers are consistently capable of clear and evocative science writing; this book is an honest and successful attempt to lead the lay reader through a field where psychology, medicine and the neurosciences all offer pieces of information. There are specific sections of advice offered to parents (this book would make particularly interesting reading to someone watching a newborn baby from day to day, observing every little nuance of behavior) and these are both reassuring and humane.
The coherent image of the newborn human the Maurers present shows us a being very different from ourselves. In fact, our words for sensation, for color, sound, pleasure, pain only offer approximations as we try to imagine the newborn's experiences. The irony, of course, is that we have all passed through that world, that those perceptions are the beginnings of adult awareness. In fact, the memories that would answer questions about this brief and unique stage of life are locked within us all. ''The World of the Newborn'' is a fascinating book, newborns are fascinating - not just because they are our children and we love them, but because they also represent our own beginnings.
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