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Experiment #6, Baby Boredom, is based on a longitudinal study conducted by Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda and Marc H. Bornstein (1989). In this study, the experimenters wanted to determine whether infants’ habituation and mothers’ encouragement of attention at 5-months had any effect on language comprehension, pretense play, and representational competence at 13-months. The experimenters collected a sample of 37 infant-mother pairs (19 male, 18 female infants) from private pediatric groups in New York. All infants were term at birth, had no significant health issues, and came from middle and upper socioeconomic households (Tamis-LeMonda & Bornstein 1989). The infants were observed in a home and lab setting at 5-months, when children’s …show more content…
In the child language activity, experimenters read a list of words and asked the mothers if their children understood the terms and if they could reproduce them (e.g. stopping action if they are given the word “no”). The words were either common nouns, specific nouns such as names, or non-nouns that included pronouns and verbs. Each word was categorized as flexible if the child could reproduce the word in any way or restricted if the child needed specific context or clues to reproduce the word. In the other activity, child play and encouragement of attention, infant-mother play was observed for 15 minutes. There were 11 toys placed out and children were observed in 15 second time intervals for various indications of interest, functioning, and pretense play. Mothers were observed in 15 second time intervals on whether they physically or verbally attempted to direct their child’s attention. In both child and mother conditions, each time interval was give a score of 1 or 0 regardless of how many times the action was observed (Tamis-LeMonda & Bornstein
Experiment #6, Baby Boredom, is based on a longitudinal study conducted by Catherine S. Tamis-LeMonda and Marc H. Bornstein (1989). In this study, the experimenters wanted to determine whether infants’ habituation and mothers’ encouragement of attention at 5-months had any effect on language comprehension, pretense play, and representational competence at 13-months. The experimenters collected a sample of 37 infant-mother pairs (19 male, 18 female infants) from private pediatric groups in New York. All infants were term at birth, had no significant health issues, and came from middle and upper socioeconomic households (Tamis-LeMonda & Bornstein 1989). The infants were observed in a home and lab setting at 5-months, when children’s …show more content…
In the child language activity, experimenters read a list of words and asked the mothers if their children understood the terms and if they could reproduce them (e.g. stopping action if they are given the word “no”). The words were either common nouns, specific nouns such as names, or non-nouns that included pronouns and verbs. Each word was categorized as flexible if the child could reproduce the word in any way or restricted if the child needed specific context or clues to reproduce the word. In the other activity, child play and encouragement of attention, infant-mother play was observed for 15 minutes. There were 11 toys placed out and children were observed in 15 second time intervals for various indications of interest, functioning, and pretense play. Mothers were observed in 15 second time intervals on whether they physically or verbally attempted to direct their child’s attention. In both child and mother conditions, each time interval was give a score of 1 or 0 regardless of how many times the action was observed (Tamis-LeMonda & Bornstein