European Journal of Psychology of Education1989, Vol. IV, n? 2, 175-176© 1989, I.S.P.A.

Infancy Risk Factors and Risk-taking.Comments on Rauh's Paper

Tiffany FieldUniversity of Miami Medical School, Miami, USA.

The Hellgard Rauh paper «On the meaning of risk and protective factors in infancy»makes several good points that I would like to highlight in this commentary. Unfortunatelyshe did not take the opportunity to discuss some of the exciting new data on infant abilitieswhich would have provided a useful yardstick against which risk can be measured. In addition,little or no mention was made of the very large literature from the 70s and early 80s oninfancy and high risk infants. Together these two omissions constitute my primary criticismof the paper. However, given that her main task was to provide an up-to-date review of thedevelopmental risk concept within a limited number of pages, these omissions are perhapsunderstandable.

Rauh is basically suggesting that a model of risk requires the incorporation of severalconcepts including stress and coping and in that context personality characteristics such asvulnerability/resilience. In the words of Bronfenbrenner (1988), she argues we need «process­person-context models». Vulnerability or reduced flexibility in contrast to resilience or theability to draw on personal or social resources certainly impacts on the infant's ability tocope with stress. In addition, protective factors such as a nurturant environment are alsopart of the equation of predicting outcomes from early risk factors. That many children arebuffered or «biologically protected» against early risk conditions probably contributes to thedifficulty of making accurate predictions from early risk factors to later childhood. This isone of Rauh's major points and one that has come to be appreciated as well as practiced.For example, complex models are the foundation for multivariate screening methods andcumulative risk models used by several infant researchers including Friedman and Sigman(1981), Parmelee et al (1975) and Field and her colleagues (1978). In these models, as in fishingexpeditions, several variables from early infancy are conglomerated to formulate a regressionon outcomes such as developmental tests in childhood. The relative strengths of these variablesare determined in a regression model and, then, in future samples infants with loaded riskfactors are selected for early intervention measures. Predicting individual performance fromcumulative risk models perhaps addresses the criticismmade by Rauh, namely that risk usuallyrefers to group or population data, not to individuals. As she points out, difficulty ariseswith group models when decisions have to be made about intervention measures for anindividual case. Also, with respect to that point, Rauh rightly claims that «... individual criteriaof subjective well-being have rarely been used in risk research with children».

176 T. FIELD

The most interesting discussion by Rauh is on risk-taking behavior. She speaks of thecuriosity and exploratory behavior of infants as being risk-taking behavior. Some infants,she claims, are apprehensive about experiencing stressful situations, while the more resilientchild appears to be either relatively immune to adverse stress effects or interprets the situationas a challenge, as in risk-taking. This leads to another interesting point made by Rauh that«a child can, therefore, move in and out of risk during its course of development» (Gordon& Jenns, 1987, p. 17). She elaborates this point by describing the infant who seeks out noveltyduring the first few months and then moves to extensive exploratory behavior at the endof the first year, behavior that can be interpreted as active search for challenging situations.Rauh then cites some fascinating observations of Hand (1981) as well as Losche (1989) whonoted that infants and young children, in contrast to older children, tend to behave at theupper limit of their competencies such that natural observations of their behavior are highlycorrelated with tested levels of development. The older children tend to select the level oftheir behavior according to more economic considerations. In this context, it is intriguingthat risk infants such as the Down syndrome infant avoid challenge and retreat to lower-levelbehavior. Spontaneous exploratory behavior is rarely noted in these children. This is an'interesting observation and one that should be further explored both for its empirical interestand for its applicability to intervention efforts.

This observation also suggests an entirely different approach to test-giving behavior.Seeking optimal behavior may be the preferred approach to testing infants, much as FranBrazelton and his colleagues have done during Brazelton neonatal assessments. As in slowlearning and other forms of learning disability, the infant may be at risk for reasons ofmotivational rather than biological problems. Teaching infants risk-taking behavior, not unliketeaching them coping skills and resilience, may be the most economic approach to intervention.To paraphrase Rauh, the sensitive parent can then learn with their child and from their childthe task of parenting, namely parenting that is adapted to the uniqueness of that child. Thisapproach is fundamentally at odds with what seems to be the natural behavior of parentswith handicapped or «at risk» infants. As a group, those parents tend to be overprotectivefor fear that the child will falter or fail, they tend to be too active and directive when theirchild does not perform and they tend to give up too easily and do for the child instead ofchallenging the child to use its own resources and take risks. A little stress and a little risk­taking behavior in this model may be just the intervention needed for the risk infant to becomeresilient and, ultimately, in the words of Rauh to become «... the agent of its owndevelopment».

References (1)

Field, T., Hallock, N., Ting, G., Dempsey, v., Dabiri, C; & Shuman, H. H. (1978). A first year follow-up of high­risk infants: Formulating a cumulative risk index. Child Development, 49, IJ9-131.

Friedman, S., & Sigman. M. (Eds.) (1981). Preterm birth and psychological development. New York: Academic Press.

Parmelee, A. H., Sigman, M., Kopp, C. B.. & Haber, A. (1975). The concept of a cumulative risk score for infants.In N. R. Ellis (Ed.) Aberrant development in infancy: Human and animal studies. Hillsdale, N. J.: Erlbaum.

(I) For the other references see Hellgard Rauh's paper.

Tiffany Field. Mailman Center for Child Development, Department of Pediatrics, University of Miami Medical School.P.O. Box 016820. 1601 N. W. 12th Avenue, Miami, FL 33101.