Connecting with babyConnecting with baby
All In The Mind
Emerging theories of child development suggest that a babies have agency over their movements even in the womb, and that their actions help them to make sense of the world.
28:52•18 Jun 2017
How Babies Build Their Minds Through Movement and Connection
Episode Overview
- Babies show goal-directed, coordinated movement from early in gestation, suggesting agency rather than random motion.
- Caregivers and infants create rhythmic, story-like interactions through body movement, facial expression and vocal tone.
- Movement is central to how the mind is formed and expressed, linking bodily action to feeling, memory and understanding.
- Autism may involve subtle disruptions in motor timing and integration that affect social coordination and everyday actions.
- Simple tablet games can capture touch and swipe patterns that help identify autism-related motor disturbances with high accuracy.
“Here are two people in love with each other. What a lucky baby.”
Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This time, the focus is on something slightly different but deeply connected to mental health: how babies use their bodies and feelings to make sense of their world long before they can talk. The episode follows neurobiologist and developmental psychologist Dr Jonathan Delafield-Butt as he traces the roots of a child’s mind back to the womb. He explains that even at seven weeks’ gestation, tiny self-generated movements are the start of agency.
By 14 weeks, fetuses in twin pregnancies reach for each other differently than they reach for the placental wall or umbilical cord, hinting at early social awareness. Dr Suzanne Zeedyk’s "connected baby" film brings this science to life with vivid scenes of a one-month-old turning his head with purpose to find his mum and sharing a "dance" of smiles and laughter. As she puts it, "Here are two people in love with each other.
What a lucky baby." These everyday moments become the building blocks of a baby’s story about the world. Jonathan links this to narrative cognition: the idea that babies and caregivers co-create little body-based stories with rhythm, tension and resolution, much like music or drama. He argues that movement isn’t just physical; it’s the way the mind is built and expressed.
The episode then shifts to autism, where subtle disruptions in movement and timing may throw a child "out of step and out of tune" with others. Jonathan describes a playful iPad game that quietly measures how children swipe and tap, reaching 93% accuracy in distinguishing autistic movement patterns. Psychologist and neonatologist Emma Shinagi’s work with newborn imitation adds another layer, showing that even hospital newborns sometimes raise a finger first, seemingly to spark social contact.
If you’re interested in how early connection shapes mental wellbeing and how understanding movement might support autistic children, this episode might leave you wondering: what stories are the bodies around you trying to tell?
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