Contingency awareness in premature infants.

Summary.-Infants of low birthweight were placed in an artificial contingency situation in which leg movement produced movement of an overhead mobile. When compared with 5 non-contingent controls, these 5 infants showed an increase both in frequency of kicks and in the amount of time spent focusing on the mobile. To explain why normal infants under typical rearing conditions do not show awareness of environmental contingencies until about 3 mo. of age, Watson (2) postulates the existence of a "natural deprivation period" during which time, because of both short memory spans and long recovery periods for a rewarded response, infants are denied the opportunity of discovering how their behaviors affect the physical environment. In a test of this hypothesis, Watson and Ramey (3) demonstrated that in artificially created contingency situations, which take into account both an infant's scanning ability and his speed of motor response recovery, 8-wk.-old infants can learn that their responses are related to consistent environmental feedback. Experimental infants, whose head movements produced changes in a visual display (mobile) hung about 18 in. above their heads, had significantly greater pillow activations than did control infants for whom the mobile rotations were automatic and not related to their head movements or for whom the visual display remained stationary. In addition, the experimental babies were described by their mothers as more attentive and expressive. In the present research, a similar procedure was employed with infants of low birthweight whose barren and monotonous high-risk nursery environments deprive them of appropriate contingency experiences even more than full-term infants in a natural environment. Ten premature infants, five experimental and five control, with three girls and two boys in each group, were studied in the Intensive Care Nursery of the Buffalo Childten's Hospital. The mean birthweight of the experimental infants was 1880 gm. and of the controls, 1830 gm. Although Ss were randomly assigned to each group, the mean gestational age of the control babies was greater than that of the experimentals (36 vs 31 wk.). At the time of the initiation of the experiment, the mean CA (age since birth) of the experimental babies was 34 days and of the controls, 40 days, yielding a conceptual age of 36 wk. for the former group and 42 wk. for the latter group. No infants with respiratory distress, convulsions, symptomatic hypoglycemia, recurrent apnea, or serum bilirubin levels above 13 mg. per 100 ml. were included. A mobile of 14 differently colored and variously shaped fish arranged in a circular pattern was suspended above the crib at about 2 to 3 in. over the infant's head. The infant was propped up by means of a blanket rolled up and placed under the mattress so that the mobile was almost at eye level and the bright nursery lights could be avoided. In the experimental condition, one end of a piece of string was attached to the mobile and the other end was tied to the infant's left ankle so that when the infant kicked his/her leg, the mobile would move. Arrangements for the control condition were similar except that the string was attached to the infant's ankle but not to the mobile. Instead, the mobile wzs moved randomly, by a nurse, during the recording periods. The mobile was introduced prior to each of the four daily, 15-min. recording periods