topics: |  psychology | social |

A psychological, experimental argument that the "Self" is a product of our social engagement.

This review focuses on related experiments on monkey personalities, often ethically problematic for today's world.

Foreword: Jerome Bruner

This is an astonishing book, astonishing both in its range and in its main thrust.

Its central concern is with the nature and origins of selfhood, which is claimed to be a "distinctively human phenomenon". It never ceases to amaze me, how we keep adding to the list of things that make us "uniquely human" - and how one after the other, things get knocked off the list. Is this tendency less strong in the non-Abrahamic cultures, where theories of rebirth blur the distinction somewhat?

Its rather contrarian view is that Selfhood emerges as a product of inevitable uncertainties about our acceptance by the larger group or, more broadly, as a product of our doubts about how Others see us. Self, in a word, is then a joint project, Cogitamus, ergo sum, rather than the simplex Cartesian Cogito, ergo sum. Selfhood is not just a product of inner processes but it expresses the outcome of real or imagined exchanges with Others.

Philippe Rochat explores not only different forms of self-awareness, but
also the varied settings in which such self-awareness may be evoked. And in
the process he leans upon evidence from his own well-known experimental
studies of young children, evidence from linguistic theory itself, and
evidence from comparative cultural studies of peoples around the world. For
him, the evidence is overwhelmingly, "Without others, there is no
self-consciousness."

Harlow's Monkey experiments

Figure 1. Devastation of social isolation. Separated from its mother at birth
and raised in social isolation in one of the infamous "pit of despair"
chambers used by Harry Harlow in the 1970s to establish an animal model of
clinical depression, this rhesus monkey ends up spending his days sitting
prostrated in a corner of the cage, displaying unmistakable panic fear. This
behavior is predictable within days of isolation.


	"Psychology of Affection": baby monkeys with surrogate mothers;
	Harlow's comments on "the nature of love"

link: Harry Harlow 1958 : The nature of Love psychclassics.yorku.ca
      Was Harlow a cruel psychopath or a scientist that showed how to raise
		children lovingly? : youtube video

Early infancy : Born to soon?

As adults, we typically spend close to 30 percent of our life sleeping.
Newborns, in contrast, spend close to 90 percent of theirs. If not fast
asleep, newborns spend their time fussing, crying, sometimes in moments of
calm wakeful state. But these moments are rare and fleeting. With eyes open,
the infant stares around with sometimes gentle writhing and orienting
movements engaging the whole body. p.62

Newborns’ rare calm and wakeful moments form a narrow window of time in their
life. This window is precious because it can inform us on the starting state
of the mind. For example, is this starting state a blank slate, as radical
empiricists would claim, or is the mind of the newborn already full of a
priori concepts and representations as proposed by nativists?

Over forty years ago, Montagu aptly termed the first weeks that follow the
nine months of human in utero gestation as exterogestation. It is an apt
description in terms of recent progress in infancy research, and in
particular fetal research showing a remarkable behavioral continuity
between prenatal and postnatal life.

In comparison to other primates, human infants appear to be born too
soon. As a case in point, to reach the growth level of other great ape species
at birth, in particular our closest relatives the gorillas or the chimpanzees,
human newborns would have more than to double their gestation time!

Various theories are proposed as to why humans are born too soon in
comparison to other closely related species. One speculation is that the
growth of the human brain demands the rich sensory stimulations provided by
the environment outside the uterus. Another tentative explanation is that
human brain growth requires more nutrient and energy resources than can be
supplied through the placenta. Another interesting evolutionary account is
linked to the evolutionary emergence of the unique human vertical posture and
bipedal locomotion. Accordingly, the emergence of bipedal locomotion in human
evolution changed the configuration of the pelvis bone and as a consequence
narrowed considerably the birth canal. This, in turn, limited the maximal
cranial growth of the fetus in order to pass through the canal safely. All
this might have channeled a precipitated human birth and an adaptation toward
a continuing gestation outside the womb.



---bio
Philippe Rochat is a professor in the department of psychology at Emory
University in Atlanta, GA. Born and raised in Geneva, Switzerland, he earned
a Ph.D. at the University of Geneva, where he was trained in psychology by
Jean Piaget and his close collaborators. The author of The Infant World
(2001), Rochat's current research focuses on learning and creativity and the
development of social intelligence and the emergence of a moral sense during
the preschool years in children from all over the world in highly contrasted
cultural environments, as well as in highly contrasted socioeconomic
circumstances.

Harry Harlow

wiki: Harry Harlow

Since Harlow's pioneering work in touch research in development, recent work
in rats have found evidence that touch during infancy have resulted in a
decrease in corticosteroid, a steroid hormone involved in stress, and an
increase in glucocorticoid receptors in many regions of the brain.[15]
Schanberg and Field found that even short-term interruption of mother-pup
interaction in rats markedly affected several biochemical processes in the
developing pup: a reduction in ornithine decarboxylase (ODC) activity, a
sensitive index of cell growth and differentiation; a reduction in growth
hormone release (in all body organs, including the heart and liver and
throughout the brain, including the cerebrum, cerebellum and brain stem); an
increase in corticosterone secretion; and suppressed tissue ODC responsivity
to administered growth hormone.[16] Additionally, it has been found that
these animals who were touch deprived had weakened immune
systems. Investigators have measured a direct, positive relationship between
the amount of contact and grooming an infant monkey receives during its first
six months of life and its ability to produce antibody titer (IgG and IgM) in
response to an antibody challenge (tetanus) at a little over one year of
age.[17] Trying to identify a mechanism for the "immunology of touch," some
investigators point to modulations of arousal and associated CNS-hormonal
activity. Touch deprivation may cause stress-induced activation of the
pituitary-adrenal system, which, in turn, leads to increased plasma cortisol
and adrenocorticotropic hormone. Likewise, researchers suggest, regular and
"natural" stimulation of the skin may moderate these pituitary-adrenal
responses in a positive and healthful way.[18]

Such terms and respective devices included a forced-mating device he called
the "rape rack," tormenting surrogate mother devices he called "Iron
maidens," and an isolation chamber he called the "pit of despair"

Criticism

Many of his experiments would be considered unethical today, and their nature
and Harlow's descriptions of them heightened awareness of the treatment of
laboratory animals and thus contributed to today's ethics regulations.



VIDEO:
Harry Harlow Monkey Experiment Contact Comfort
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KlfOecrr6kI

Harlow first reported the results of these experiments in "The Nature of
Love", the title of his address to the sixty-sixth Annual Convention of the
American Psychological Association, Washington, D.C., August 31, 1958.

The Nature of Love : Harry Harlow

American Psychologist, 13, 673-685 (1958)
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Harlow/love.htm

During the course of these studies we noticed that the laboratory raised
babies showed strong attachment to the cloth pads (folded gauze diapers)
which were used to cover the hardware-cloth floors of their cages. The
infants clung to these pads and engaged in violet temper tantrums when the
pads were removed and replaced for sanitary reasons. Such contact-need or
responsiveness had been reported previously by Gertrude van Wagenen for the
monkey and by Thomas McCulloch and George Haslerud for the chimpanzee and is
reminiscent of the devotion often exhibited by human infants to their
pillows, blankets, and soft, cuddly stuffed toys.

The baby, human or monkey, if it is to survive, must clutch at more than a
straw.

The surrogate was made from a block of wood, covered with sponge rubber, and
sheathed in tan cotton terry cloth. A light bulb behind her radiated
heat. The result was a mother, soft, warm, and tender, a mother with infinite
patience, a mother available twenty-four hours a day, a mother that never
scolded her infant and never struck or bit her baby in anger.

The [wire] surrogate mother is made of wire-mesh, a
substance entirely adequate to provide postural support and nursing
capability, and she is warmed by radiant heat. Her body differs in no
essential way from that of the cloth mother surrogate other than in the
quality of the contact comfort which she can supply.

For four newborn monkeys the cloth mother lactated and the wire mother did
not; and, for the other four, this condition was reversed. In either
condition the infant received all its milk through the mother surrogate as
soon as it was able to maintain itself in this way, a capability achieved
within two or three days except in the case of very immature
infants.

With age and opportunity to learn, subjects with the lactating wire mother
showed decreasing responsiveness to her and increasing responsiveness to the
nonlactating cloth mother, a finding completely contrary to any
interpretation of derived drive in which the mother-form becomes conditioned
to hunger-thirst reduction. The persistence of these differential responses
throughout 165 consecutive days of testing is evident.

the mother or mother surrogate provides its young with a source of
security...

tested this relationship on four of our eight baby monkeys assigned to the
dual mother-surrogate condition by introducing them for three minutes into
the strange environment of a room measuring six feet by six feet by six feet
(also called the "open-field test") and containing multiple stimuli known to
elicit curiosity - manipulatory responses in baby monkeys. The subjects were
placed in this situation twice a week for eight weeks with no mother
surrogate present during alternate sessions and the cloth mother present
during the others. A cloth diaper was always available as one of the stimuli
throughout all sessions. After one or two adaptation sessions, the infants
always rushed to the mother surrogate when she was present and clutched her,
rubbed their bodies against her, and frequently manipulated her body and
face. After a few additional sessions, the infants began to use the mother
surrogate as a source of security, a base of operations.
The behavior of these infants was quite different when the mother was
absent from the room. Frequently they would freeze in a crouched position...
Emotionality indices such as vocalization, crouching, rocking, and sucking
increased sharply. 

In the last five retention test periods, an additional test was introduced in
which the surrogate mother was placed in the center of the room and covered
with a clear Plexiglas box. The monkeys were initially disturbed and
frustrated when their explorations and manipulations of the box failed to
provide contact with the mother. However, all animals adapted to the
situation rather rapidly. Soon they used the box as a place of orientation
for exploratory and play behavior, made frequent contacts with the objects in
the field, and very often brought these objects to the Plexiglas box. The
emotionality index was slightly higher than in the condition of the available
cloth mothers, but it in no way approached the emotionality level displayed
when the cloth mother was absent. Obviously, the infant monkeys gained
emotional security by the presence of the mother even though contact was
denied.

As far as we can observe, the infant monkey's affection for the real mother
is strong, but no stronger than that of the experimental monkey for the
surrogate cloth mother, and the security that the infant gains from the
presence of the real mother is no greater than the security it gains from a
cloth surrogate.

---
In the late 1950s, Harlow raised infant rhesus monkeys with dolls as
surrogate mothers. One surrogate was covered in cloth; the other was made of
bare wire, but provided milk. Contrary to the psychoanalytic belief that the
infants would become attached to those mothers who provided them with
nourishment, the infant monkeys spent most of their time embracing the cloth
mother.  Harlow's work attracted the interest of the psychiatric community
for its relevance to understanding the normal development of emotions in
humans and their pathological deviations.

These surrogate mothers were placed in different cubicles attached to the
infant's living cage. In the first experiments in this project, Harlow used
eight newborn monkeys. First, four of them were placed with the two
surrogates, and the cloth mother was fitted with a bottle that provided
milk. In the next trial, the conditions for the other four babies were
reversed: the milk bottle hung from the wire surrogate (Figure 1). But the
milk seemed to make little difference. The monkeys spent most of their time
with the soft mother, regardless of which mother provided milk.

Next, Harlow tested the strength of the infants’ attachment to their
surrogate mothers in two experimental set-ups: the fear test and the open
field test. In the first, he analysed the infant monkeys’ response under
emotional stress by placing them in a strange situation. In the open field
test, Harlow put an infant in a room with objects that experimenters knew
would elicit its curiosity. The baby monkeys reared with cloth mothers used
the surrogate mother as ‘a source of security, a base of operations’ (1958a:
679). That is, they clung to her initially, but slowly moved to play with an
object, then came back for a bit more contact comfort before venturing forth
again in their explorations. In contrast, monkeys reared with a wire mother
crouched at her feet, terrified of the objects, never moving away to explore
on their own (Harlow, 1958a: 680). According to Harlow (1959: 72), their
conduct resembled ‘the autistic behavior seen frequently among neglected
children in and out of institutions’.

http://individual.utoronto.ca/vicedo/vicedoca/Publications_files/Vicedo_HofP.pdf

---
Beginning in the 1950s, University of Wisconsin- Madison's
Harry Harlow was responsible for torturing
perhaps thousands of primates in so-called psychological research. Methods
involved impregnating monkeys via rape racks and then isolating the infant
immediately after birth for several weeks, thereby inducing extreme fear and
anxiety. Researchers would then give the mother back her offspring and
observe how she mauled the baby.

what does it mean to say that "the baby loves its mother"?

monkey baby: spends days with a wired figure providing milk and another
cloth-covered figure next to it.  If scared it would invariably go to the
cloth mother.  The baby chose to spend 17x more time with
the cloth figure than the wired figure, its source for milk.



in the 1970s, Harlow began inducing depression in rhesus
macaque monkeys by placing them in small vertical chambers, or pits of
despair. He usually used infant monkeys for this purpose, isolating them for
weeks until they stopped moving altogether and assumed a hunched position in
a corner.

Most animals did not recover and remained psychotic until their death.