Have you ever tried to remain immutable before a baby? Do not react to their eyes, to their laughter, to their request for attention, not to talk to them ... Surely they don't like anything. The researcher Edward Tronick conducted an experiment called "The Game of the Motionless Face", with interesting conclusions.
The research aimed to deepen the bidirectional system of affective communication between babies and their primary caregivers, to study the effects of parents' depression on babies.
The main conclusion is that the baby will do everything possible to get an answer, even at the age of three months, and that they show their discomfort when the mother does not interact with them.
Mothers were asked to look at their babies, but to show a neutral expression, to suppress the urge to move their faces and respond playfully as we usually do.
Faced with this unusual lack of sensitivity and response On the part of their mothers, the babies tried several times to initiate the communication themselves, making their thanks, moving their arms, and ultimately trying to get the mother's attention.
The researchers observed that before giving up (they usually end up crying) babies tried an average of four different strategies with their mothers to get their attention.
Tronick asked the mothers to pretend to be a little sad in front of their babies. At the sign of sadness, the babies became more emotionally negative, more reserved and less communicative.
In the case of babies with depressive mothers, when faced with a long time without receiving stimuli and responses, researcher Tiffany Field discovered that babies tend to mimic sadness, low energy, low commitment, anger and irritability of your mothers.
In the most severe cases, if a mother's depression continues for a year or more, her baby will begin to show constant growth delays.
It seems clear that babies take a very active role in social interaction, from very young. They seek to be stimulated, have fun and connect emotionally with their parents, so we must stop talking to them, to pamper them and to encourage them in their expressions.
And, as we see, the inexpressive face experiment He highlighted the ability and aptitude of babies for emotional communication, a capacity that we should stimulate for their correct and happy development, for their own communicative and affective capacity.
