Interview with Anne Bobin Begue

Hello Anne Bobin Begue

You are a developmental psychologist, senior lecturer in developmental psychology and head of the developmental psychology teaching team. You are also in charge of the test library in the Department of Psychological and Educational Sciences and the RIPSYDEVE (Réseau Interuniversitaire de Psychologie du Développement et de l’Education) referent.

You are particularly interested in the temporal dimension of actions and interactions in the development of infants and young children.

What are the main principles of babies’ physiological, psychological and developmental rhythms?

A baby’s life is full of temporal regularities, i.e. the same event is repeated over the same time interval. Babies are immersed in an environment rich in regularities even before birth, during gestation. These regularities are found at every level.

Firstly, at a physiological level. Our bodies express regularities in the way they function: heartbeats and breathing movements are the most obvious expressions of biological and physiological rhythms.

What’s more, our physiology also follows the alternating rhythms of day and night. These are known as circadian rhythms. We have a brain structure, the suprachiasmatic nuclei, which receive the light information picked up by our eyes via a specific pathway. So they’re not just for looking! They also inform our body when it’s daytime and when it’s nighttime, enabling the body to prepare itself physiologically, particularly for waking up and falling asleep. We’ve all had the experience of waking up just before our alarm clock, sometimes to the minute, but only when we’re in a period when we’re sticking to regular schedules. The brain has aligned itself with the alternating day and night schedules and is preparing the body to be in phase. It’s important to know that the circadian system may already be functional in utero, even though data is obviously lacking. For the time being, the consensus is that the system is sufficiently developed by 3 months of age, which is why we expect an infant of this age to sleep through the night.

The question that naturally arises is how can the foetus begin to set its circadian rhythms to the alternation of day and night when it is in near darkness with poorly developed vision? This is because the system obtains information from other sources. While in utero the foetus may be exposed to variations in light intensity, it is also exposed to other stimuli that vary according to the time of day, such as maternal activity, the sound environment or the composition of the amniotic fluid (linked to diet). However, it is not certain that variations in certain maternal chemical messengers involved in regulating circadian rhythms can pass through the placental barrier.

After birth, babies are exposed through their relationships to the physiological rhythms of the person caring for them (heart and breathing rates, voice and rate of speech), but also to their social rhythms, such as their activities (through carrying, but also through their periods of availability for care) and their interactions (physical: caresses, massages; exchanges and protoconversations; games).

These perinatal experiences show that the foetus, and then the infant, are exposed to stimuli with similar temporal regularities before and after birth. Indeed, although the living environments are different (aquatic in the prenatal period versus aerial in the postnatal period), the information that remains identical is temporal information. Thus, the temporal component of the parents’ voices, the rhythm of speech and the rhythm of the mother’s walk are not transformed by the environment: the rhythm is the same before and after birth.

Finally, babies themselves produce many highly stereotyped, repetitive behaviours. Starting with sucking, particularly non-nutritive sucking, but also pedalling, rocking, etc… These rhythmic baby behaviours were documented in the 1980s, and what’s interesting is that their rhythms change depending on the context! These are not simply archaic or reflex behaviours. They are a form of expression.

Why are they essential?

This is where we realise that these rhythms are fundamental, particularly for babies, as they are at a stage when they are developing many skills. From the moment we are able to detect a temporal regularity in our environment, we are able to anticipate. For example, babies can anticipate the control of their posture when they are being carried by their mother who is walking or rocking them, or anticipate their turn to speak in an exchange. Anticipation is essential for managing all the stimuli we receive. Babies can regulate their attention, ignore recurrent stimuli or process them automatically, react at the right moment and even feel reassured because they know what’s coming next. Babies can also recognise regularities in more complex events, such as the flow of speech. This skill will therefore contribute to language learning. Finally, rhythmic patterns help to support social behaviour: even in babies, moving in rhythm with a social partner will make them more inclined to help him/her, for example.

All these aspects of anticipation, segmentation and the regulation of levels of arousal and attention have already been well documented scientifically, and there is still much to be done to fully understand the roles of rhythmicity. Another interesting aspect of this research concerns various disorders in which researchers have found that they are associated with rhythmic disorders, such as certain forms of language disorders, attention disorders (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorders.

How can we better respect these rhythms and support the children for whom we are responsible as parents or early childhood professionals?

Rhythms are in fact a support for regulating levels of wakefulness and sustaining attention. They are important for enabling the baby to anticipate what is going to happen. In practical terms, parents and professionals can use these rhythms to support the baby, either by observing the baby’s rhythms or by ensuring that they are highlighted in their proposals.

Starting with daily rhythms. The more regularly a baby’s day is organised, the more regular his physiology will be and the more in tune he will be with the organisation of that day. This is not to say that this organisation should be followed to the minute, nor that it should be immutable: babies evolve! It must be consistent over time and adapt to the child’s development. Hunger, falling asleep, calm moments and more energetic moments are thus more predictable for the parent or professional and help to reduce signals of discomfort in the baby (whose physiology is not in line with the demands of the parents or professionals) and facilitate these moments. If the parent or professional needs to re-establish regularity, the first thing to do is to start by identifying the baby’s physiological signals and adjusting to them.

As babies are also fundamentally social, rituals (of a high quality, i.e. with genuine availability) with their parents or referring professionals will help to fill the baby’s emotional reservoir. The recurrence of these moments of emotional sharing is reassuring: the baby is not insecure because he knows at what point in his well-paced day he will be able to have this moment of sharing.

Many parenting practices are widely used and based on these rhythmic properties. Rocking, which is a form of continuity in babywearing – especially if accompanied by lullabies – will help to regulate the baby’s level of wakefulness, and is most often used to calm a restless baby. In these practices, regularity of time is particularly important. This is also the case for songs and speech addressed to the baby (also known as “baby talk” or parenting): exaggerated prosody and repetition, as well as appropriate speech rate, help to mobilise the baby’s attention and contribute to access to language.

In a way, regularity equals security. And if, in babies, it’s the regularities of time that will support the acquisition of many skills, later on, children and adolescents will feel reassured by regularities that take the form of predictability (the same causes produce the same consequences), meaning that the educational framework is consistent… But here again, it needs to evolve with time.

Thank you Anne Bobin Begue.