Like other researchers in the 1960s, Tom Anders put electrodes on babies to learn more about their brain development during sleep. When he wanted to study his infant son, though, Anders balked at this information-gathering device.
So, in 1972, the UC Davis psychiatry professor switched to time-lapse videotape recording--he took videocameras into babies' homes to record their sleep cycles. And what he found was startling: No babies sleep through the night.
"Until our research, people thought babies either slept through the night or they didn't--they cried. But we found they all woke up, and one group cried, while the other group was able to self-soothe back to sleep," Anders says.
He went on to study the differences between babies who cried for their parents when they couldn't sleep and those who found ways to put themselves back to sleep.
Anders' studies of babies' sleep-wake cycles have stood the test of time and are cited today in child-development textbooks. His work is among the nationally recognized contributions UC Davis scientists have made in understanding early childhood development.
UC Davis researchers study how babies think, communicate, relate to their parents and caregivers, sleep and wake; and how young children remember stressful events, organize their thoughts and play with other children.
Much of this research focuses on children's earliest development. And it is this development, occurring from birth to preschool, that is now universally acknowledged to be critical to the rest of a child's life.
"The research so clearly shows the importance of early experience on brain development," says Linda Acredolo, a UC Davis psychology professor who studies infant-parent communication. "We used to think babies don't remember what they hear and experience--but they do."
It's been only in the past few years, however, that policy-makers have embraced this idea as well.
At the national level, for example, a White House conference in 1997 focused on the importance of early nurturing of the brain. In California, a 1998 legislature-commissioned California Research Bureau report confirmed the importance of the first three years for cognitive development. And this year, money is following those findings: $700 million in tobacco taxes from Proposition 10 is being set aside for county programs to enhance early development for at-risk children. UC Davis child development researchers are working with Yolo County officials to prepare for the new early-intervention programs; their efforts will draw on results of the many studies conducted on campus that add to the understanding of a child's development.
*
Inside a lab in the Social Sciences and Humanities Building, Amelia #75 (her name as a research subject) sits on a periwinkle-blue carpet and plays the game Chutes and Ladders with a psychology student. Her mother sits nearby, answering some questions for a researcher.
The 5-year-old and her mother are participants in an ongoing study of young children's memory and of attachment between child and parent being conducted by psychology professor Gail Goodman's lab. The study is headed by Kristen Alexander, a Ph.D. student in the human development department. The researchers selected Amelia and her mother to participate during the girl's immunization at the county health department.
Jennifer Schaaf, a psychology graduate student, asks Amelia's mother what her daughter said after their previous visit to the lab when Amelia was asked questions about her shot. Schaaf then explains what kinds of questions and activities Amelia will undergo this time.
Once Amelia is in the interview room, a student researcher asks her to describe the room she was in last time, then proceeds to ask her a series of questions, including leading questions. The researcher is trying to gauge Amelia's memory and suggestibility. Meanwhile, another student interviews her mother about the attachment style, or relationship, between mother and daughter. To conclude the session, the researchers tell Amelia about a little girl whose parents are going away for two weeks. They ask her how she thinks the little girl feels about that. Her answers, in part, will indicate her attachment to her mother.
"We want to know how 4- and 5-year-old children react [to stressful situations], and we look at their personalities and their suggestibility," Schaaf said.
The study topic fits into Goodman's overall investigations of the accuracy of children's accounts of stressful or traumatic experiences. Goodman is known nationally for her studies of how children are affected by leading questions and by the use of anatomically correct dolls in sexual abuse cases.
In working with children 3 to 5 years of age, Goodman says she has found that children can have "wonderfully accurate memories. Though sometimes they are not correct. It depends on the way they're questioned."
