The Still Face Experiment.

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apzXGEbZht0[/youtube]
For some reason, I feel incredibly angry at that baby.
Of course for manipulating its mother, which I am very strongly against (but that was cancelled out by the fact that it was a 1 year old baby).
The reactions that sympathize the baby make me feel angry also.
But I doubt any of you will feel that same way.
Maybe it is just me, who is angry at a thing that needs something I do not and also deem worthless.

It is much easier for you to respond if I pose a question.
This will make me yield more results, some just answering the question and some may support or attack my beliefs (which is acceptable by the forum rules).

The question: Did you sympathise with the baby?

I sympathize very much with the baby, and the mother as well. It would be difficult for me, as a mother, to do that experiment. Although I was watching the video objectively, understanding that it was an experiment, my eyes welled up with tears as soon as the baby began to cry.

I have two boys, one is diagnosed with AS and the other is not. As far as I remember, both of them acted similarly to this baby.


I had thought for a while that I might be mildly AS myself, but I've decided I'm not. If I'm going through a major depression (which I have done often for huge chunks of my life) then I have a lot of disabling AS traits, sensory problems, and social difficulties, but they seem to all but disappear when I'm not depressed. I think in general, any AS traits I have are mild enough that I can't claim the AS label, so I suppose I'm speaking mostly as a non-AS person, more or less.

It's interesting that this video makes you angry at the baby. The baby is probably only about 4 or 5 months old, so that's not manipulating any more that it would be "manipulating" if she reached out and tugged at her mother shirt when hungry. It seems to me that a baby this age needs its mother to pay attention to it for survival as well as for cognitive growth. Do you think perhaps your anger is actually envy? (I hope that doesn't sound offensive or presumptuous. I really don't mean it to. I'm just thinking of possibilities and wondering, out of curiosity.)

I have to say that I felt terribly sorry for that baby. The intensity of emotion displayed there is just incredibly disturbing for me. Maybe that's why you were angry with it. It made you feel uncomfortable.

Yes, I sympathise with the baby.

The baby also made a terrible shrieking sound which just made me angrier.
That was what made me uncomfortable.
Of course, anger indicates discomfort.
But it is different for me because it tipped in the other direction.
I just hate to see that 'normal' interaction with that baby makes it able to become completely manipulative later in life.

The implications made me very sad. I knew it was an experiment and that the mom would start to respond again soon and it would be okay, but it made me think about those situations where the baby doesnt get the normal acting mom back. While watching I was trying to remember how I was with my daughter at that time. I cant remember because I went through a lot of stress in the early years being a single mom alone in a foreign country. I remember people talking to me about being a doting mom, and I have pictures of myself with my daughter at that age. I can tell that I was responsive, but I often remember myself being blank and almost catatonic at times. Maybe I just was so stressed I don't remember it well at all.

Would the same thing happen if the roles were reversed?
Would a mother try different things to get a child's attention if it did not reciprocate?

I was sympathetic to the baby, which I did not expect, as I hate babies. Yes, the sounds it made annoyed me, but the fact that it was crying made me a little sympathetic.

Most definitely, as this would be an abnormal reaction. It may be exactly what parents of autistic children encounter at that age. It is also quite abnormal for the mother to just sit there like that- the baby sensed it even though his perceptions are still very basic and undeveloped.

That's an interesting question.

At an extreme level, I've known a parent who would pinch her kid so that the kid would cry so she could pick her up without the 'hubby objecting' " your spoiling her".
These people were dysfunctional through and through ,and produced adults that were NPD and BPD.
(Though I believe these disorders are organic in nature .)




to the O.P.
Ive never had kids, but I felt a degree of discomfort when the baby was distressed.

Perhaps it was the hubby's fault for objecting, forcing the woman to go to that extreme. There is nothing wrong with wanting to cuddle your baby a lot.

Probably. Would you try different things if your computer were not responding to input or responding sluggishly? Expected behaviours, whatever else they may be, are expected.

I sympathized with the baby and it made me think of parents or caregivers who can be sort of mentally impassable with children which is counter to what I think they need. I don't think the baby was being manipulative or being taught to be that way. We are taught to respond to one another and he had been in a conversation of sorts with this mother and then she went blank on him. That'd freak me out, too. It's getting the silent treatment which can lead to anxiety and loneliness.

This is kind of interesting.

I'm not a baby person really, but every time I'm around one, they seem to be drawn to me...they'll stare at me and maybe crawl towards me to investigate.

A baby that young has no way to indicate distress other than to cry. It is a natural response and a baby's brain is not developed enough to plan. Just as it's a natural and appropriate response for a parent to respond to a baby's cry.

Children do become capable of manipulating their parents as they get older, but parents are usually able to tell when this happens. In my case, my son is so incurably honest, he usually tells me.

I can't help being reminded of many people who accused me of trying to manipulate them because my feelings were stronger and more painful than they thought was appropriate and it made them uncomfortable. I see this in my relationship with my son sometimes... he wants me to be upset that he's upset and instead I get impatient and angry. It makes me understand better how people felt about me when I was younger.