Infant Laughter, Toddlers' Scribbles, and the Metaphorical Three Year-old: Toward a transitional neurobiology of the mind with implications for parenting and teaching.
"In applying a method, we need to be as sure as we can that the method itself does not either determine the outcome in advance of the empirical inquiry or artificially skew it. A common method for achieving this... is to seek converging evidence using the broadest available range of differing methodologies. Ideally, the skewing effects of any one method will be canceled out by other methods. The more sources of evidence we have, the more likely this is to happen."
Abstract
Information from the neuroscience of vision, attention ,and emotion, as well as from the fields of education, linguistics, and evolutionary trans-species psycho-biology suggest the following:
- In terms of physical structure and neurochemical process, humans brains operate like other mammalian brains. Humans' brains, primate brains, and other mammalian brains exhibit evolutionary neuro-continuity.
- Trans-species research suggests that human brains, like animal brains, are strongly influenced by a paleo-mammalian limbic, or emotional system. (Panksepp)
- These ancient emotional systems include circuitry and chemistry which promote the following useful behaviors: SEEKING, FEAR, PANIC, RAGE, PLAY, AND NURTURING. (Panksepp)
- In very young animals including human infants and toddlers, the ancient SEEKING and PLAY systems exert considerable influence on growing brains, providing a neurotrophic, or brain growth effect, as well as releasing the "feel good" neurotransmitter, dopamine. The presence of dopamine in a brain system indicates, additionally, that learning and memory circuitry are active. This means that curious exploration and play in little children releases neurochemicals connecting feelings of happiness with the cognitive activity of learning.
- It is useful to understand the ancient mammalian RAGE system in terms of a response to the curtailment of freedom (Panksepp), including the freedom to SEEK and to PLAY. Once we understand RAGE in this way, we better understand why babies resist being dressed, and why students are "oppositional" in the classroom. If the human brain is denied choice, denied exploration, denied play, denied freedom of action including learning, it becomes frustrated, irritated, and ultimately, furious. It is also true that the brain experiencing PANIC, FEAR, OR RAGE functions in an inhibitory manner vis a vis the brain's SEEKING system. This means a child who is panicking because of separation anxiety - from mother, from the group - or who is afraid and thus motivated either to fight or to flee, or who is experiencing anger because it senses that its freedom to explore and learn have been cut off, is not going to be able to learn and remember. Homes and classrooms which respect children's natural instincts to explore and play, homes and classrooms where children feel connected with their teachers and other students, homes and classrooms where children's basic physical needs for shelter, food, and cuddling/hugging/rough-housing are satisfied, will provide environments where children's brains are freed-up emotionally to learn and remember. Our more complicated brains allow us to SEEK for knowledge as well as food, shelter, and companionship. We humans can PLAY in our minds as well as with our bodies.
- The human brain's larger, more connected neocortex anticipates the future and reflects on the past. This ability to move back and forth in time makes it possible for humans to experience a broader, more refined repertoire of emotions. We can respond to feelings springing from our palemammalian limbic system in thoughtful instead of "knee-jerk" ways. For instance, we may feel irritated or frustrated in jobs or classrooms that limit us, but we need not express full-blown rage over the situation. We can figure out ways to get out of dead-end jobs. Children, of course, do not have much choice about dead-end homes or classrooms.
- Three aspects of mental/emotional/physical behavior in very young human beings suggest a discontinuity with standard mammalian brain activity beyond current human neocortical activity. These three behaviors are infant laughter, toddlers' scribbles and the metaphors of the three year-old.
Laughter: Animal research with rats and dogs suggest that animals laugh, too, when tickled, or when involved in rough and tumble play (Panksepp, Simonet). The neuro-evolutionary usefulness of this play is social and chemical. Dopmaine and ocytocin are released in laughter and play, making the brain feel nurtured, and happy, even joyful. Animals do not laugh at being startled. They do not burst into laughter when they catch sight of their mother's face in the middle of the night. In human infants, the ability to burst into spontaneous, belly laughter with delight over being surprised, or at negated prediction (as we note in the game of Peek-a-boo: Mom is gone: wow, no she is not gone after all. Gee, that is fantastic. I thought she was gone!), signals a brain that can greet newness and strangeness, including a reversal of its own predictions with positive feelings creating a brand new "take" on the ancient SEEKING and PLAY circuits) instead of negative, zenophobic emotions.
Scribbling: Toddlers scribble. This behavior, like infant laughter, is spontaneous. In addition, all children move from scribbling to drawing. Children can learn to make the other marks we call words, numbers, algebra, graphs, calculus, musical notation with a little instruction and support. Scribbling signals a brain designed over millenia for multiple literacies as its special amalgamated emotional system: the SEEKING/PLAY SYSTEM with its special human neocortical spin.
Metaphor: A three year old of my acquaintance at age three described birch trees as "zebra trees," and macaroni as "rainbow noodles." A metaphor is a new term arrived at through observations about sameness and difference. Scientists call metaphors models. If we think of the child's similes and metaphors as scientific models, we may begin to respect and dignify the thinking skills of very little children as such thinking skills and instincts should be respected and dignified. The ability to spontaneously invent new verbal models signals a brain capable of recombinant, or inventive, thought. Creatures may have new thoughts --- new song, a nest decorated in a n especially eye-catching manner. But human three year olds progress from verbal metaphors and towers of blocks and Legos to written metaphors and other kinds of models based on mark-making systems. Other creatures do not do this. This does not make humans better. It does make us different.
- These three behaviors in very little human children suggest a monotremic, or new evolutionary branching for our primate group. Infant laughter, toddlers' scribbles, and the metaphors of the three-year-old child are the actions of a brain in which emotion and cognition have the potential, at last, of working together in mutual awareness and harmony through the generation of a range of cross-modal, spatial/linguistic brain activities including drawing, writing, mathematics and musical notation. If we use these systems in mutually reflective ways, translating across them, and if we educate ourselves about our brains, most especially our ancient emotional brain, we humans may be able to take advantage of a neuro-evolutionary impulse toward the conscious integration of the triune brain --- reptilian, mammalian, and neocortical. These three behaviors: Delight at being surprised, an instinct for mark-making, and the ability to create new models are clues to an intelligence on a new trajectory. This new trajectory has a chance of producing brains capable not only of thinking using signs, but of translating across sign systems, using pairs, or triplets, or quartets of systems for representing meaning, for the sake refined thought and action. The more complex the world becomes, the more complex the brains must be to manage that world.
Other creatures share multiple intelligences with humans: Spatial intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, musical intelligence, bodily intelligence, linguistic intelligence, maybe even intrapersonal intelligence. We do not know whether other creatures carry on internal dialogues, mainly because they can not tell us about these inner thoughts.
What other creatures do not share with us are systems for representing information using marks. These systems of marks organize our brains in terms of circuitry and chemistry in ways that differ quantitatively and qualitatively from other creaturely brains. We have different objects to think with inside our brains. Our mark-making behavior proves this. When we write a story, we are not doing an observational drawing of an object that exists outside our brains. We are working with interior information: the very stuff of brain waves.
- A new term describes brain-based parenting and teaching: neuroconstructive. The ways in which we interact with children affect how the child's brain constructs its connections and neural nets. Parenting and teaching can be neurobeneficial or neurotoxic. It is the position of this paper that neurobeneficial parenting and teaching will recognize and nurture the three special human emotional/rational capabilities of the very young child: Laughter, scribbling, and model-building.
The rationale for supporting these three behaviors include the mental/emotional health of the child, and the survival of our civilization.
To survive, our families and our local and global communities require members who can greet newness and difference with delight, who can produce new solutions to age-old problems including how human groups may live peaceably on the land. It is the position of this paper that the human brain is uniquely equipped to solve such problems by translating information across a range of mark-making, or notational systems including the visual, the verbal, the mathematical and the musical.
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