Relationship of Infant Psychobiological Development to Infant Intervention Programs.

Abstract The present paper offers some cautions concerning potential risks involved in prescribing intervention when it is not necessary and potential problems with matching the nature of intervention to the characteristics and developmental level of individual infants. It is our position that intervention should only be attempted when the infant is at risk for poor outcome because early stimulation as a means to enhance development may not always be beneficial for adaptive functioning at later ages. We describe two fundamental psychobiological aspects of behavior during early infancy, state organization and attention to stimulation, and stress the importance of understanding such functioning with respect to preterm and CNS damaged infants as well as healthy infants.