Throughout the life of the human being they will mimic, often subconsciously, the behavioral actions, ways of expressing thoughts, and so thinking strategies of those they feel they can trust and desire to bond with. As we can see, we need to learn from others basic strategies that we use, either in whole or in part, to devise our interaction with others and with the world about us. To ensure this, and to provide for its necessity, nature has provided us with a chemical and emotional bonding process that begins so early in life that its value is easily overlooked. I refer to this as imprinting.
The smiling, the cooing, and the crying are not innocent gestures the baby makes to their caregiver. Rather, they are purposeful strategies designed to evoke a supportive reaction, through which the baby will design their basic interactive schemas and give shape to the style of their investigative learning.
Without the caregiver, the baby will begin to explore by themselves. As they grab and ram an object into their mouth they activate a two-way mechanism. The urge to do this is caused by the need to break their gums to help their teeth to come through, although in so doing the baby is learning to be aware of the use of things. The feel of the object, the sensation of taste it provides, and the knowledge of how dissolvable it is are all experiences by which the baby is learning an awareness of usefulness. Thus, the baby will smile and coo at an inanimate “thing,” and when it does not respond the baby will discard it, or cry for the protection of their caregiver if they sense insecurity.
By such actions, the baby is beginning to set-up strategies for trial and error learning. By the security they gain from these interactions, they evolve to explore first familiar (safe), and later unfamiliar objects as they build-up confidence in relationships. Through the variety of their experiences, the baby develops schemas to deal with information. Accordingly, by the reaction the baby gets from an object or absence of this, they begin to learn to distinguish between animate and inanimate things. Through the reactions they obtain, the baby learns to apply behavioral mannerism to one and reflective analysis to the other. It is upon this that the infant starts to construct processes of behavior and intelligence. It is by the tuning of their emotional sensitivity in such actions that they make, through the sense of security they gain, and the language skills they that are impressed upon them, that the infant learns to make their personal interaction with the world about them.
Such development of their intelligence is a very protracted affair, and it will take some two years from birth before any sense of stability may be observed. Even then, it will take many more years before a reliable stability in attention, and so performance will be recognized by which the skills of one child may be compared to those of another. Then, based on their emotional strengths, which they develop through the behavior of those they meet, they will devise a measure of sensitivity to examine and make their sense of information. By the language skills they have developed and by their confidence to interact, they will explain their mind to others and so by judged upon this. By the sense of success or failure they gain through others, they will devise strategies and tactics to deal with the world about them and so learn ever more how to be human.
Roy Andersen