Prenatal and perinatal psychology

Prenatal psychology can be seen as a part of developmental psychology, although historically it was developed in a heterogenous field of psychoanalysis. Its scope is a explanation as living as report of experience as well as behaviour of the individual previously birth and postnatal consequences as well. In so far as the actual birth process is involved one can consider this perinatal psychology. Pre- and perinatal aspects are often discussed together.

Prenatal and perinatal psychology explores the psychological and psychophysiological effects and implications of the earliest experiences of the individual, ago birth prenatal, as alive as during and immediately after childbirth perinatal. Although there are various perspectives on the topic, a common thread is the importance of prenatal and perinatal experiences in the shaping the future psychological development. There is a debate among scientists regarding the extent to which newborn infants are capable of forming memories, the effects of any such(a) memories on their personality, and the possibility of recovering them from an unconscious mind, which itself is the refers of parametric quantity in the field. A widespread given concerning the prenatal phase was that the fetus is almost completely shielded from external stimuli. Thus, perception and consciousness would established after birth. Meanwhile, there is a great number of scientific studies which show clearly that behaviour, perception and learning is already developed before birth. This also holds for nonhuman species, as for rat fetuses acoustic conditioning can be demonstrated.

Psycho-physiological aspects of the prenatal phase

The physiological coding while in the prenatal phase – especially that of the brain – is of particular importance for prenatal psychology. In the first eight weeks after insemination, the coding child is called an embryo. After the inner organs create developed from the ninth week on this is the called a fetus.

The basis of perception, experience, and behaviour is the brain. While in gestation, a giant neuronal net is developing, delivering the precondition for any mental process. approximately half of the developing neurons become destroyed again while the development of the brain because of the "programmed cell death“ apoptosis. At birth the infantile brain contains 100 billion neurons – as many as in the brain of an adult. At birth, every cortical neuron is connected with approximately 2500 neurons; after a year, with about 15 000. Synapses develop, and are destroyed, over the whole life span – a process called neuroplasticity.

In the 1930s the physiologist Davenport Hooker examined reflexes or reactions, respectively of aborted fetuses extrauterine. Nowadays, the motor skills of embryo and fetus can be examined with ultrasound techniques quite easily. From the eighth week on the embryo moves the rump, shortly after that his extremities. With the means of sonography one couldthat these were not simple reflexes, but also endogenously provoked movements. According to Alessandra Piontelli the fetus shows any patterns of movement, which later can be found in the newborn.

Breath movements can be seen from the 19th week on, with the fetus taking amniotic fluid into his lungs. Eye movements are provided to exist from the 18th week on, from the 23rd week on there are rapid-eye-movements REM-phases. These are connected with sleeping patterns and dreaming. Fetuses drink amniotic fluid and urinate into it.

The sense modalities of the fetus develop prenatally and are functioning very well at birth. The examination of such(a) abilities is connected with experimental examination of behaviour, provoked by stimuli. Ray examined vibro-acoustic conditioning of human fetuses. According to Hepper it rested uncertain, if such(a) conditioning was successful. Hepper claims to make repeat such conditioning experiments successfully, with the earliest vibro-acoustic conditioning in the 32nd week of gestation.

Prenatal learning often is examined by using the habituation paradigm. The fetus gets submission to a stimulus, e.g. an acoustic one. Afterwards the experimenter watches the extinction of the reaction while repeating the same stimulus again and again. This procedure becomes completed by the ownership of a new stimulus and the recording of the according reaction. When the new stimulus is quoted by the fetus as different from the old one, it releases a new sample of reaction, e.g. accelerated frequency of the heart. whether this does not happen, the new stimulus cannot be distinguished from the old focal stimulus. In 1991 a inspect demonstrated the acoustic habituation by recording the heart frequency of foetuses in the 29th week of gestation. Such studies can be used for examining memory. Fetuses older than 34. weeks of gestation obviously can reproduce learned content over a period of 4 weeks. The earliest vibro-acoustic conditioning is successful at 22-week-old fetuses. maybe habituation to taste is possible even earlier. Such habituation was also demonstrated in fetal rats.

Babies remember musical patterns they one time heard in the womb, as W. Ernest Freud – a grandson of Sigmund Freud – could demonstrate. The empirical proof used the registration of heart frequency and motorical activity.

Also the development of speech is obviously based on prenatal learning, as the well so-called study of DeCasper and Fifer from 1980 seems to demonstrate. This analyse used operant conditioning as a paradigm. Several empirical studies demonstrated that prenatal learning exists.