
Still Face experiment: What happens when a mother shows no response to a child? - codexon
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apzXGEbZht0
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alttab
Absolutely incredible. Emotional state is even more powerful than logic. The
baby knows the mother is right there and could still sense something was
wrong.

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TotlolRon
Which 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"?

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ardit33
yes, and you may end up with a psychopath child
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy>

Or somebody with full blown npd (narcissistic):
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disord...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder)

Pick your poison.

That experiment was actually painful to watch.

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sailormoon
I agree, I found it very uncomfortable. And only 2 minutes!

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tjogin
Yeah, it was horrible. Imagine what it would do to a child to be brought up in
an environment that cold and unresponsive. :-(

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corruption
There 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!

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kqr2
Kind 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_e...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Harlow#Surrogate_mother_experiment)

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mgcross
As 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.

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newobj
I 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.

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petercooper
Stimulus/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.

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Tichy
"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"

I hope that I won't do stuff to my child because I read somewhere that it
might be good. Isn't there a chance to simply feel what is right?

The stimulus/response aspect is very interesting, though. Couldn't there other
ways to untrain the "cry to get attention" behavior than letting the child cry
out? Like responding to other cues than crying?

This just makes me think it might be interesting to program a simulation of
such behaviors and look for equilibriums. Because it is not only the child
reacting to parents, but also the parents reacting to the child, it's a
complex system... Ah, wish the day had 48 hours...

~~~
petercooper
_I hope that I won't do stuff to my child because I read somewhere that it
might be good. Isn't there a chance to simply feel what is right?_

Sure, different strokes for different folks! I don't think anyone who always
goes with their gut is wrong, but I also don't think experimenting within safe
boundaries is a bad thing. I think everyone _should_ bring their kids up in
different ways - diversity of approaches is a _good_ thing.

One thing I painfully recognize, though, is that I'm often wrong and my gut
instincts are based on faulty underlying facts, so I'm quick to use other
people's knowledge to either reinforce what I know or to change my direction.
"Overcoming" certain parenting instincts in this way could be seen by some
(and possibly rightly) to be risky - I just see it as an attempt to improve.

Watching a documentary about child rearing worldwide, we were surprised at how
many different (and, to Western eyes, worrying) ways there are to raise and
treat kids. As a planet, we do "ok." The nomads on the Russian steppes wrap
their babies tightly all day and put them in a cradle on the back of a donkey
for 8 hours a day..

 _Couldn't there other ways to untrain the "cry to get attention" behavior
than letting the child cry out? Like responding to other cues than crying?_

My reading suggests so, but that it's a lot harder and time demanding. The
reason is that instead of giving zero response to undesirable behavior and a
lot of response to positive behavior.. instead you're giving positive behavior
to everything and need to give _very_ strong and constant responses to the
positive behavior to make it stick, as it were.

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SomeCallMeTim
It makes me feel bad for the baby. "Why isn't mommy playing with me? What
happened?!"

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stromhold
this goes into more things that babies can do:
[http://www.cracked.com/article_18404_6-shockingly-evil-
thing...](http://www.cracked.com/article_18404_6-shockingly-evil-things-
babies-are-capable-of.html)

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leftnode
As 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
Congratulations.

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dannyr
I'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?

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gsk
Father 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.

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dannyr
gsk,

Thanks. I don't have a kid so I can't do the experiment. It's just amazing how
much intelligence babies have.

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petercooper
Very 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.

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wdewind
I 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.

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ars
It 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.

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petercooper
_Babies 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.

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enneff
How is this in any way surprising from a 1-year-old?

This guy gets paid for this research?

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aristus
Experimentally 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.

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enneff
I 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.

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aristus
Popularizing 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.

