In order to qualify as a participant of the study, infants must be healthy and singleton requiring no neonatal intensive care. 90 infants were randomly assigned to either the control condition or the condition being tested. Of the total of 90 infants, 57 were being studied using the still face model between 3 and 36 hours after birth. 33 infants were observed as the control condition between 4 to 36 hours after birth. Each of the participants were placed in the examination room about 30-90 minutes after feeding in a car seat on the table. The experimenter was approximately 30 cm away from the infant with video camera in the room. Over the span of the experiment, there were three phases for each condition. Each phase was 180 seconds to account for newborns potentially having slower reactions. The control group had three phases each of which was three minutes continuous interactions. The experimental group consisted of P1:3 minutes of natural interaction, SF: 3 minutes of unresponsive interaction (still face), and P3: 3 minutes of responsive interaction. During the still face interaction, the experimenter would be neutrally silent toward the newborn. The temporal sequence and duration of various behavioral event of the newborn was studied. Each behavior was categorized as the following: approach behavior- gaze, distress behavior-crying, and self regulatory behavior- sucking. Overall, the duration of time the infant in the control group gazed at the experimenter was the same amount of time that the infants in the experimental group gazed at the experimenter. The duration of eye contact decreased as the experiment progressed, the duration of eye contact decreased from P1:SF:P3. Overall, the newborns duration of a distressed facial reaction was longer in the still face group compared to the control group. There was a substantial connection between the distressed face and condition interaction. The duration of the a distressed face was longer in both the still face condition and phase 3. In the control group, there were no differences in the distressed reactions of the …show more content…
Communication begins before birth. Even when in the womb, a fetus is communicating with its mother, whether is be kicking or craving certain foods. This brings up the concept communication being an instinct behavior among humans. It raises the question: Do humans have an innate motivation to engagement in communicative behaviors with others? This is a very interesting article to read because there are not many studies involving such young infants. Using newborns in this study definitely pinpointed the age in which communicative behaviors can really begin to be observed, however these participants were so young that it is difficult to separate the newborns sensitivity to communicative disturbance and the newborns trying to meet their needs. There is no way to tell if a newborn begins to cry because of the communicative disturbance or because his diaper needs to be changed. I agree with the findings with the consideration of the difficulty of differentiating why the newborn is crying. The results from this study prove to show significance but it should be studied with multiple trials and or different groups of infants to prove the validity of the