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Still Face experiment: What happens when a mother shows no response to a child?
- alttab 17y agoAbsolutely incredible. Emotional state is even more powerful than logic. The baby knows the mother is right there and could still sense something was wrong.
- jacquesm 17y agoLittle children, babies included are pretty clever. Eye contact right after being born, tracking people, recognizing faces of close family at a few days to a few weeks. I never get enough of observing these little minds at work and how they take in the world around them, fascinating.
- david927 17y agoHow is yours?! When was it born?
- aasarava 17y agoJust a helpful tip to those without kids: Most parents prefer that you don't refer to their children as "it", even if you don't know the gender. Remember, you wouldn't refer to someone's partner or cofounder as "it". ;)
- huherto 17y agoHow are you supposed to do it since you don't know the gender? Honest question. I am not a native speaker.
- derobert 17y agoSafest (as in least likely to offend) ways would be to use "he/she" or rephrase w/o the gendered pronoun as in "when was your child born?". Traditionally, male-gendered is used for unknown sex, though some object to that.
- TotlolRon 17y agoWhich leads to the question - had this been repeated daily - can training make logic overcome the emotion at such a young age? Can the same situation be turned in to a "game"?
- ardit33 17y agoyes, and you may end up with a psychopath child http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy Or somebody with full blown npd (narcissistic): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disord... Pick your poison. That experiment was actually painful to watch.
- sailormoon 17y agoI agree, I found it very uncomfortable. And only 2 minutes!
- tjogin 17y agoYeah, it was horrible. Imagine what it would do to a child to be brought up in an environment that cold and unresponsive. :-(
- corruption 17y agoThere are some horrific examples of just this in the dark past of psychotherapy if you care to take a look. Once was enough for me!
- heed 17y agoYou may end up with one anyway, no?
- jey 17y agoUnlikely. Emotions are hardwired into you, and at least all other mammals. It'd be like hoping to train yourself to not need to eat -- your biology doesn't allow it.
- kqr2 17y agoKind of reminds me of the surrogate mother experiment which shows the importance of contact to a developing monkey. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harlow#Surrogate_mother_experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harlow#Surrogate_mother_e...
- petercooper 17y agoVery cool to see this, as I did something like this recently with our 4-5 month old and her reactions were almost exactly the same.
- wdewind 17y agoI doubt doing it once matters, but isn't there something kind of bad about having a baby escalate signals until it cries, and then responding with attention as soon as it does? I guess there's no other way to do the experiment and then calm the kid down but it seems a little weird to watch.
- ars 17y agoIt would be bad to do it a lot maybe. But a few times is not going to have any harm. At worst it will teach the baby to cry right away when the mother does that. Babies cry a lot, and people don't play with them constantly. A little more isn't going to harm them. The times where there is a positive reactions far outweigh the negative ones here. Not sure if that was clear. I mean that when there is a positive reaction the baby learns from it. A negative one is mostly ignored as far as long term learning goes.
- petercooper 17y agoBabies cry a lot, and people don't play with them constantly. A little more isn't going to harm them. I wish I could find the citation but my wife and I did a lot of reading of studies in the early weeks we had our baby. There were more than a few references to actually allowing your baby to be frustrated and upset from time to time in order to ensure they developed the skills to deal with a little frustration, rather than growing up to freak out at every tiny thing. We're no child psychologists, but it's worked for us. Perhaps a few times a week when the baby was inconsolable, we'd let her "cry it out" (but not full on Ferberizing) for 5-10 minutes and then console her when she went into a quieter phase. Now, at five months, she's well adjusted (for her age), sleeps through the night, and deals with frustration pretty well. It could all be BS, of course, but letting her freak out from time to time didn't do any obvious harm, at least.
- SomeCallMeTim 17y agoIt makes me feel bad for the baby. "Why isn't mommy playing with me? What happened?!"
- mgcross 17y agoAs a parent of two, that's exactly what I expected to see. The mother shows a lot of control, that had to be hard, even for a short period.
- enneff 17y agoHow is this in any way surprising from a 1-year-old? This guy gets paid for this research?
- aristus 17y agoExperimentally confirming things you think are true is still science, especially if you can quantify the results precisely. And as he says 1 minute in, this experiment was first done 30-odd years ago, when scientists (perhaps obtusely) did not think babies interacted in a socially meaningful way.
- enneff 17y agoI understand that. I can see how this piece of experimentation would fit into a greater project. But to produce this video and tell the world about it? Seems crazy to me.
- aristus 17y agoPopularizing scientific findings is also a service. I have that conversation a lot with people. :D Maybe it's not "hacker news", I can't say.
- najirama 17y agoI enjoyed the video, but this isn't really "experimentally confirming" anything. It is just a tasty morsel of pop science, well executed.
- scott_s 17y agoExperimentally testing things you think are true is extremely important, since sometimes it turns out they're not.
- newobj 17y agoI don't understand parents who let their kids (e.g. <2 years) "cry it out" to learn how to self sooth, especially at night w/r/t to sleep. It's totally counter-instinctual and inhuman. Just look at how freaked out this baby gets, and she can still see her mom. Our son woke up about 8 times a night for 1.5 years, and we were always there for him. Luckily he's gone down to 2-4 wake ups a night, finally.
- petercooper 17y agoStimulus/response. If crying results in a near instant response, crying becomes the mode of communication. I'd love to find the citation but studies we read months ago indicated to us that allowing a baby to experience a certain level of frustration can help it build coping skills - so we gave it a try (but not full on Ferberization, just 10 minutes here and there for the first few months, mostly during the day - at night we did the "pick up, put down" technique). My wife found it very hard but she was all for it, and as a bit of a Vulcan-esque personality, I could control the situation. All babies have different temperaments, of course, but ours has now slept 7am-7am with only one wake up (for food - she goes back to sleep within 5 minutes) between 2-5 months (with only one nightmare week when we tried weaning too early - causes painful gas!). She is a very happy baby. We have teething due next though, I bet.. :-) Something interesting has arisen from our technique, too. She's had to build a rich vocabulary of sounds. We can usually tell when cries are "real" or merely to communicate, and can "ignore" most of the superfluous ones. The result has been that she shouts or laughs for attention, and we respond to that immediately (as we want to encourage it). Over time, nearly all non-essential crying has stopped and been replaced by funny sounding "argh!" and "Wooo!" type shouts and calls. To any (future) parents reading this who want to try similar techniques, I can't personally recommend it. All kids are different and what we've tried is very against the grain with the current common literature on raising a kid. Take what I say with a big pinch of salt - it just worked for us, is all.
- ThomPete 17y agoExactly my experience too. To ad to the stimulus/response. Dawkins has a pretty interesting theory in "The Selfish Gene". In it he talks about why little birds peep. One conclusion could be that they peep because they are hungry. But another more interesting conclusion he makes is that they peep to attack predators thus forcing the mother to silence them by finding food. The important part is to spot the difference between when they are really sad/afraid and when they are simply trying to get things their way. On top of that some children like my son don't use pacifiers which makes it quite a bit more challenging to balance things out.
- stromhold 17y agothis goes into more things that babies can do: http://www.cracked.com/article_18404_6-shockingly-evil-things-babies-are-capable-of.html http://www.cracked.com/article_18404_6-shockingly-evil-thing...
- dannyr 17y agoI'm not 100% convinced. Is this really about still-face or lack of interaction with the child? What if the mother interacts with the kid with a still-face, will the baby react the same way?
- michael_dorfman 17y agoYou're not convinced of what, exactly? One of the points the video was making is that the facial response is a very powerful form of interaction, and that very young infants respond to this.
- dannyr 17y agoWhat I'm saying is the video did not show conclusively that it is exactly because of the still face. There were 2 elements in play in the experiment: the still face and the mother not moving at all. If the mom was moving instead but with a still face and the baby reacted the same way, then it is because of the still face. gsk, however, attested that it is the still face (see his reply to my comment above).
- gsk 17y agoFather of a 2 year old here. It is really about still-face. Daughter won't allow me to change her nappy still-faced (notice this often when I have something else on my mind and try to do a quick nappy change expressionless). I have to acknowledge her and talk to her otherwise she'll cry.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- leftnode 17y agoAs someone a few days away from having his first child, this is pretty stunning. I don't want to say it's unsurprising, because it makes total logical sense. However, the speed at which the baby went from being in a happy mood to trying to get her mother's attention again was the most interesting point. It must've been difficult for the mother to not respond, and I can't imagine the parent who doesn't love their child like that. It just makes child abuse that much worse knowing how much children need attention like that.
- Dove 17y agoCongratulations.