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Hardwired Baby Reflexes — Parallax Forums

Hardwired Baby Reflexes

ercoerco Posts: 20,256
edited 2009-10-20 17:45 in Robotics
I'm doing less Stamping & robotics since our twin girls arrived, and more playing with (OK, debugging) them. These are our first kids and I just had to share three surprising observations about them. Specifically, three instinctive traits that are firmly hardwired into the OS of every human baby. Possibly noteworthy to anyone out there designing their own cyborg OS...

First, the amount of suction these 5-minute old newborns could apply to my finger in their mouth was amazing. Obviously this is·required for nursing and survival, but I·expected it to be a fairly weak force, scaled down to their body size. In reality, it was not much less than the suction a grown person can generate. Wow. That's gotta be hard on Mom's hardware. Go apologize to your mom right now!

Second, I noticed my girls exhibiting the exact same startle response when resting. They fling their arms open wide and open their hands fully. See my kid vid at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhOleckx1-Y·A little searching and I found that this is called MORO REFLEX, and hospitals even test that reflex in newborns. Tons of identical responses in other Youtube videos,·some fairly dramatic ones at ·http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jKCTCgmCpY·and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWge27E9x_I·. Others show responsible (?) parents letting their kids fall backwards: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxvb097an3o

Third, when you blow in their face, they instantly stop crying and brace for something. My girls·have·the same STORM REFLEX as this boy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF3RJsnZORg

Not sure how these last two helped in the evolutionary process, but I find them terribly interesting. If nothing else, blow in your kid's face to stop a tantrum! I can't wait to find out what these little girls will teach me next.

And thank you, I HAVE also noticed·the consistent response to feeding... poopy diapers!

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·"If you build it, they will come."

Comments

  • Beau SchwabeBeau Schwabe Posts: 6,566
    edited 2009-10-19 05:37
    erco,

    I remember with our girls one of the tests I thought was interesting was that once a baby has clinched or grasped on to your finger, you should be able to 'lift' your baby slightly off the ground with their own grasping strength enough to hold then up (like pull-ups)... don't do this for very long of course and have a secondary catching strategy in the plan behind them. But I found it interesting when the nurse did this. My wife and I just looked at each other with our jaw open, while "nurse betty" (don't remember her actual name) proceeded with various other tests.


    I'm glad your twins are in fine shape!! keep up the good debug work!

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    Beau Schwabe

    IC Layout Engineer
    Parallax, Inc.
  • Mike GreenMike Green Posts: 23,101
    edited 2009-10-19 06:04
    erco,
    Yep, they sure are amazing. A good Moro reflex, good suck, and good grasp are all signs of a healthy newborn. Think of the grasp as holding on to the fur that isn't there.
  • HumanoidoHumanoido Posts: 5,770
    edited 2009-10-19 07:21
    Erco, great to hear from you, and to hear that your new family CPUs are doing fine.
    The hereditary reflexes and instincts are undoubtedly essential to human survival. It is
    likely that our humanoid cyborg will have instinctive reflexes built in, to protect itself, to
    protect humans, etc. although the reflexes may vary in style and implementation. I understand
    you're now dealing with two processors and specific input and output. Just continue to put in
    lots of good programming and the results will become great achievements. (a humanoid
    reflex example follows)

    humanoido

    sciencelinks.jp/j-east/article/200704/000020070407A0070544.php

    Reflex System for Humanoid Robots against Large Disturbances
Author: ZAIER RIADH (Fujitsu Lab. Ltd.)   
Journal Title: Nippon Robotto Gakkai Gakujutsu Koenkai Yokoshu (CD-ROM)
Journal Code: L4867A  Pub. Country: Japan
Abstract: In this paper, the reflexes that highly adapt and control the movement
of the humanoid robot when a large disturbance occurs is considered. The structure
of the reflex system is proposed combined with the walking motion generator. With
only four predefined postures and sensory feedback, the robot is enabled to generate
reflex motions against large disturbance acting on its body. Experimental results, using
HOAP-3 of Fujitsu, shows that a reflex movement is successfully integrated with the
rhythmic motion. As a result, the proposed reflex system contributes toward the safe
interaction of the humanoid robots with the environment. (author abst.)

    Post Edited (humanoido) : 10/19/2009 7:35:02 AM GMT
  • kwinnkwinn Posts: 8,697
    edited 2009-10-19 14:20
    Erco, when my sons were born I thought of these early traits as the "boot code" to load their operating system. Somewhat analogous to the rom code in the propeller that allows it to load programs from eeprom or I2C. Of course it takes many years for that "operating system" to be loaded.

    I was also surprised by how logical their learning behavior was. For instance, most of the problems they had with English was due to the arbitrary and illogical nature of the language. For example, if I were to tell them to behave themselves they would answer "we're being haved". Children seem to be able to make very logical extrapolations at a very early age. My biggest regret is not making notes on all these observations at the time.
  • Beau SchwabeBeau Schwabe Posts: 6,566
    edited 2009-10-20 04:58
    I have to deal with self modified Boot code ... This is especially at high risk any time the in-laws are present. I try to keep backups of the Boot code, but the in-law effect is like a virus and there is always some sort of permutation that gets missed that takes some considerable undoing to get things back just the way I like it.

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    Beau Schwabe

    IC Layout Engineer
    Parallax, Inc.
  • GWJaxGWJax Posts: 267
    edited 2009-10-20 05:24
    Congrats Erco!! My now evolved son stands 6'2" and the OS has gone haywire as he thinks he knows everything and teaching more is out of the question because the hard drive is some what full so he thinks. I had just in-planted a 5 tera byte HD in him and upgraded the firmware to the 11th edition. I thought I had MicroSoft out of the picture but yet again they got in with a bunch of bugs that need critical updates as always. I tell ya there's no way one can keep up with updates until they get that 30th year OS system like when I got mine many years back.
    Enjoy them as they evolve because it goes very fast, one blink and it's all over [noparse];)[/noparse]

    Jax

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    If a robot has a screw then it must be romoved and hacked into..
  • tedbeautedbeau Posts: 48
    edited 2009-10-20 15:21
    Erco said...
    And thank you, I HAVE also noticed·the consistent response to feeding... poopy diapers!
    ·I believe this translates in electronics/ programming as "Garbage in equals Garbage Out"

    ·
  • CounterRotatingPropsCounterRotatingProps Posts: 1,132
    edited 2009-10-20 16:50
    Congrats, Erco!

    > I HAVE also noticed the consistent response to feeding... poopy diapers!

    As long as their buffers are FIFO, you're OK.

    Gotta watch the input flow ... buffer overflow tends to make things come back up ...

    LOL

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  • ercoerco Posts: 20,256
    edited 2009-10-20 17:45
    CRP: You're exactly right, I've got buffer overflow all over my shirt! There's def a max data rate, but it seems to vary by child and time of day!

    All: Lots of great organic/computer analogies here guys, thanks for keeping me sane & laughing when I'm reformatting my CPUs and oscillating them back into sleep mode at 3 AM.

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    ·"If you build it, they will come."
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