As many have already mentioned, blind children produce their first social
smiles at the same age as sighted children. This observations provides
important evidence that smiling is typical for human behavior.
However, I recall some literature on the maintenance of those social smiles.
It seems that in seeing infants the social smile is maintained by the return
smile of a partner (typically parent). Blind children do not receive this
reinforcement and so their social smiles must be reinforced with other kinds
of signals - voice or touch. While the blind infants initiate the same
behavior as their sighted peers, maintenance of that behavior is more
difficult. I think that I can find the citation for this if someone is
interested.
Dennis
Dennis M. Goff
Dept. of Psychology
Randolph-Macon Woman's College
Lynchburg VA
-----Original Message-----
From: Pollak, Edward [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Friday, January 26, 2001 8:14 PM
To: 'Tips (post)'
Subject: Student Question
Children born deaf and blind do, indeed, smile at the appropriate age. This
fact is often cited as evidence that smiling and some other basic behavior
patterns as "hard wired."
Ed
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Edward I. Pollak, Ph.D., Department of Psychology,
West Chester Univ. of PA, West Chester, PA 19383
Office: 610-436-3151; Home: 610-363-1939; Fax: 610-436-2846;
Office Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays 8-9 and 11-12 and
Mondays and Wednesdays 12-1 and by appointment,
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Husband, father, grandfather, biopsychologist, herpetoculturist and
bluegrass fiddler
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If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to serve as a horrible
warning. --Catherine Aird
