Touch in Early Development. - Review - book review

Adolescence, Spring, 2000

FIELD, Tiffany M. (Ed.). Touch in Early Development. Mahwah, NJ:

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995. 121pp. $34.50 (h). Touch in Infancy was the title of a symposium held to celebrate the opening of the Touch Research Institute. The institute is designed to conduct basic research on touch and on the skin, and to work with wellness programs, such as massage therapy and other kinds of touch therapies, to facilitate better health and to treat various diseases. The presentations made at the institute's opening are published in this volume. The volume begins with a chapter by Ashley Montagu, who speaks to the significance of touch for our species across all ages. T. Berry Brazelton then writes about touch and the fetus and the need for an assessment of the fetus. In a chapter on the need for touch during labor and delivery, Marshall Klaus introduces the doula, someone who comforts the laboring mother with touch. Gene Anderson's chapter focuses on the critical role of touch for the premature infant's development, introducing the kangaroo care method. Moving into infancy, Ed Tron ick talks about the compensatory role of touch stimulation for infants who have unresponsive (e.g., depressed) parents. In a developmental trajectory starting from the prenatal period and ending in infancy, these authors highlight the critical role that touch plays in growth and development. Additional chapters include: the genetic basis for touch effects (Saul Schanberg); touch and smell (Michael Leon); touch and the immune system in rhesus monkeys (Stephen J. Suomi); and Infant Massage Therapy (Tiffany Field).