The relevance of the fetal and neonatal period for the development of novelty preferences, learning, habituation and hemispheric specialization.

The concept of instinct has been largely based on thinking which relies on an either or approach to determining the genesis of information required for the development of behavior patterns. In part, in response to criticisms of dichotomous views by Schneirla and Lehrman adherents of the view that there exist two distinct sources of information, that is, genetic or environmental (and all of the variants of this nomenclature including its most modern and currently popular form, that is, hard or soft wired) have modified their stance by positing that all characteristics are products of both. They therefore maintain that the task for analysis is parceling out the amount contributed by each source.

No Compelling Evidence That Newborns Imitate Oral Gestures.

Newborns (N = 83) were presented with 3 conditions, each for 160 sec: tongue protrusion (TP), mouth opening (MO), and control (CO). In TP and MO, a female model alternated between demonstrating the gesture for 20 sec and presenting a passive, motionless face for 20 sec. In CO, she presented a passive face in both the "demonstration" and "passive" intervals.