Article
The Smiling Response: A Contribution to the Ontogenesis of Social Relations
In this monograph René Spitz and Katherine Wolf study the infant's smile as a contribution to the ontogenesis of social relations. From about the third month, they report, infants smile at a human face seen from the front and in motion. They smile even at a mask that keeps the forehead, eyes and nose, but not at a face seen in profile. In the second half of the first year the smile becomes selective and is withheld from strangers. The authors read the smiling response as the infant's first active turning towards a human partner and an early step in the development of social and object relations.
Main ideas
- From about three months infants smile at a frontal, moving human face.
- The smile is elicited by a configuration of forehead, eyes and nose, even on a mask, but not by a profile.
- In the second half of the first year the smile becomes selective and is withheld from strangers.
- The smiling response is the infant's first active turning towards a human partner and an early step in social and object relations.
What it shows
René Spitz collaborated with Katherine Wolf
Wolf worked with Spitz on his infant studies of the 1940s, helping with the observations and the statistical treatment of the data, and co-wrote the papers on anaclitic depression and the smiling response.
- 1946
René Spitz developed Smiling response
Spitz and Wolf's 1946 monograph studied the infant's smile at the human face, which Spitz later made the indicator of the first organizer and of the precursor of the object.