Touch in Babies Provides a Foundation for Empathy

[Judi Lynn]

15 February 2020
by: Andrea Korte

Babies begin to relate to others through touch from their earliest days – connections that have implications for their health and their social development well beyond infancy, particularly their ability to empathize with others, according to several scientists.

“Very young babies can look out at other people’s bodies moving and can relate the same biological movement to their own felt movement,” which is a “bedrock” for social development, said Andrew Meltzoff, co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington.

This connection between babies and their caregivers “provides the foundation for the capacity of empathy,” said Ruth Feldman, professor of developmental social neuroscience at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel. “The more they experience this synchrony, the more they are able to develop empathy later on.”

Meltzoff and Feldman shared results from their work at a Feb. 15 news briefing at the 2020 American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting in Seattle. They were joined at the presentation by Minoru Asada, professor at the Open and Transdisciplinary Research Institute at Osaka University, where he explores whether the sense of touch could serve as a basis for empathy in robots.

More:
https://www.aaas.org/news/touch-babies-provides-foundation-empathy

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

1. To me this is why holding and comforting babies is crucial.

The advice to let a baby "cry it out", or to leave it alone in a bedroom to self comfort is appalling. Remind me again why not meeting a genuine human need is good?

[bitterross]

2. I don't think that advice is black and white. There is a balance.

I don't think that advice is as black and white as you imply.

I agree that touch, holding a baby, holding and hugging one another is way under-rated by our US society. It is especially problematic that males are taught they are not allowed to touch, hug, and comfort one another.

As for babies, there is a fine balance. Yes, we should attend to their needs. We should not always attend to their wants. That is the fine balance. Understanding the difference between the need and the want.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. There's a system to train babies to sleep by themselves

which basically involves putting the baby to bed and letting it cry itself to sleep. What the baby learns is that no matter how badly it needs a parent, the parent won't show up.

You are right about needs and wants. An infant really only has needs. Over time it acquires wants. I know that by being responsive to my two children, especially when they were infants, really paid off.

[empedocles]

3. Touches and smiles, back and forth, to and from baby.

[Javaman]

5. this may explain a lot about trump.

there seemed to be a mutual dislike between him and his mother. she has been described as being "distant" when raising the orange asshole. And she didn't have many good things to say about him as a kid.