Imprinting as a resource of family relationships in the orienting-exploratory activity of young children

Abstract

This article explores the role of imprinting as a neurodevelopmental phenomenon of early ontogenesis and a mechanism for implementing a genetic program through emotional contact with the mother in a family setting. This demonstrates the nervous system’s high potential to accumulate new experience through the development of non-associative and associative forms of learning. The mother following reflex is considered an innate, multi-stage reaction that ensures adaptation to new living conditions through an orienting reflex to stimuli whose strength corresponds to the reflex excitability of the developmental potential and the development of orientations to the stimulus. This explains the biological and social nature of maternal behavior aimed at nurturing and meeting the child’s needs in new conditions during the latter’s first months. Emotional contact with the mother and interaction with those closest to the genetic program ensure reflexive activity for life support and the imprinting of positive emotional contacts in memory. Behavior conditioned by the imprinting of negative emotions in family relationships affects the reflex excitability of vital reflexes and leads to a lack of satisfaction with vital needs and somatic weakness. The evidence for imprinting and orienting reactions is the emergence of a reflexive response to a stimulus involving a change in the body position. The practical part of the study presents a questionnaire for parents designed to assess imprinting during the first two months of a child’s life. It includes criteria reflecting the mother’s emotional state during pregnancy, conditions of tactile contact, breastfeeding characteristics, and the emergence of orienting reflexes. The survey demonstrates a direct relationship between the child’s orienting reactions and the potential of family relationships, confirming that the family is a key resource for initiating and implementing genetic developmental programs, compensating for unfavorable adaptation, and forming stable orientations toward novelty.