Naturalistic Observation

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At one moment while I am playing with her, I pretend to cry as my finger gets hurt by a solid toy. The child sees that and she quickly becomes distressed and upset on her face. She proceeds to the other rooms, looking for her caregiver. However, when the caregiver doesn’t respond, she becomes so anxious that you can almost see tears in her eyes and her face flushes. This is surprising to me because she actually shows empathy for my injury. According to researches, at age of 6 to 8 months, babies begin to understand that they are people, separate entity from their caregivers. From 12 to 18 months, they start to realize that other people have feelings different from theirs. Around 2 years of age, children start to show genuine empathy, understanding how other people feel even they don’t feel the same way (Abedon). It is amazing to see that the child feels my pain and try to soothe it by looking for help, however, it can be due to that we have a close relationship. It makes me wonder that if she understands love, trust, respect, honest or caring as well.

After I show her how to bounce a ping pong ball, she imitates me and does the same. She has quite a lot fun bouncing the ping pong ball and repeats times after times. After she bounce the ball to the floor, her gaze follows to trace the ball continuously. When the ball accidently settles in a corner of the wall that is occupied by tables and chairs, she comes to us and calls for help. Once again, this shows that the child has some ideas about her limit that she will have difficulty reaching the ball under the table.

When she comes up to me and say jiejie (sister), the caregiver cheers her up for saying that new word correctly. We would clap our hand and say “great job”. The child repeats that word times after times after we clap our hand and complement her. This reminds me of positive reinforcement in operant conditioning. When saying the word “jiejie” gets rewarded with hand claps and complementary words, this behavior is strengthened and she is very likely to produce the word again and again.

The caregiver once again stands at the door, waves to her and says goodbye. The child still produces similar reactions as if she is conditioned to wave her hands and says “bye-bye” to people who stand at the door, preparing to leave. She doesn’t demonstrate much separation anxiety at this stage, not even that the caregiver is her most close ones. The same happens when later I take her outside to play, she doesn’t show any separation anxiety and relaxingly says bye to her caregiver.

To me, this infant is like a positive, lovely angle who smiles a lot. The fact that she doesn’t show much separation anxiety and her empathy for my injury surprises me. It seems to me that her development advances a little faster than what a 15-months-old normally should. Understandably, that’s just subjective opinions based on pure observations and limited interactions carried out with the infant. It is particularly interesting to look at infants’ speech and behaviors from a different angle after gaining certain knowledge from the lectures.

Bibliography

Abedon, E.P. (2002). Toddler Empathy.

Retrieved from http://www.parents.com/toddlers-preschoolers/development/behavioral/toddler-empathy/

Altmann, G.T.M. (2002). Statistical Learning in Infants.

Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC137701/

BabyCentre Medical Advisory Board. (2014). Developmental Milestones: Socialisation in Babies.

Retrieved from http://www.babycentre.co.uk/a6576/developmental-milestones-socialisation-in-babies

Fisher, J. &Aslin, R.N. (2002). Statistical Learning of New Visual Features Combinations by Infants.

Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC137800/

McLeod, S. (2010). Zone of Proximal Development.

Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/Zone-of-Proximal-Development.html

Raising Children Network. (2016). Separation Anxiety in Children.

Retrieved from http://raisingchildren.net.au/articles/separation_anxiety.html/context/734

Siegler, R., Deloache, J., Eisenberg, N., & Saffran, J. (2014). How Children Develop.

New York, NY: Worth Publisher.