Why the "Still-Face" Experiment Was a Game-Changer

Source: Dana Tentis/Pixabay

I have been writing about parents, with a focus on mothers and daughters, for over 20 years and if I had to choose one specific finding that was all-important to understanding infant-child development, I’d choose what is called the "Still-Face Experiment" or "Still-Face Paradigm," hands down. At the time this experiment was published in 1978, it was still assumed that infants didn’t really interact with their mothers or caregivers, nor was it thought that interaction with an infant was actually vital to her or his development and thriving. Edward Z. Tronick and his colleagues changed all of that.

The Still-Face Paradigm

The setup, conducted in a laboratory and videotaped—which was a novelty at the time—was relatively straightforward: The baby is in a seat facing her mother and the mother is talking, smiling, and making eye contact and the infant responds by vocalizing, smiling back, and pointing at things in the room. At one point, the mother turns away and when she faces the baby, what the infant sees is a still, unsmiling face. The baby goes into overdrive to reengage her or his mother—doing all the things that previously have garnered attention—but no go; the mother’s face remains still. What you see on the video is heartbreaking: When the infant realizes that while Mommy is there, she is also somehow gone, the baby begins to melt down. She looks away, she waves her arms in protest, slumps in the seat, and then begins to wail. It’s at that point that the mother relaxes her face and starts interacting with the infant again, re-establishing and repairing the connection. It’s worth noting that the baby is relatively wary and that it takes a bit of time for her to recover.

Of course, in the lab setting, how the mother interacts is scripted and the length of time she’s disengaged is relatively short. But what happens to a baby when a mother routinely shows a lack of attunement and responsiveness to her child and ignores those protest signals or gets angry? Alternatively, what happens to the infant when the mother switches between hot and cold, being responsive at times and ignoring the child at others? It will not surprise you that these maternal behaviors affect not just how the baby develops in terms of emotional regulation but the mental models he or she forms of how relationships work. (Yes, we are talking about attachment styles.)

Mind you, we are not talking about sporadic minutes of a still face—such as taking a phone call or being distracted or ignoring the baby because you must do something urgently—but persistent patterns of maternal behavior.

Attunement and interaction are essential to the infant’s thriving and development during the first three years of life and have effects that reach way beyond those years and into adulthood.

What the Still-Face Experiment and Follow-Ups Revealed

The original experiments involved infants two to 12 months old and so, even with the publication of the results, the question was: Were the researchers reading in? After all, an infant can’t tell you what he or she is feeling and perhaps the researchers were seeing dyadic interaction because they were looking for it. Well, experiments with toddlers—light-years ahead in terms of development and already talking—quelled any doubts. The toddlers acted precisely the way the infants had but with more intensity; they worked hard at trying to reengage their mothers by using speech. They raised their voices in response to the still face, waved objects in front of her, and tugged at her to try to get her to respond. The toddlers exhibited the same behaviors as the infant cohort: a pattern of protest, followed by a flood of emotion, and then turning away so as not to experience more emotional pain. Once again, repairing the connection took time.

Realizing that dyadic interaction was important and that infants and babies experienced stress was a game-changer. It also put a psychological focus on the meaningful differences in how women mothered and how the development of their children was affected for both good and ill. When maternal attunement is absent on a regular basis or inconsistent, the child’s mental models of how relationships work and whether people can be trusted to be there for you shift toward the negative. These mental models become what are called adult attachment styles (secure, and the three styles of insecure attachment: anxious-avoidant, dismissive-avoidant, and fearful-avoidant). The insecure styles of attachment emerge when maternal attunement is sporadic or non-existent. (Click here for more on attachment styles.)

3 Takeaways From the Still-Face Experiment

If you are an adult struggling to make sense of the effect your childhood experiences had on you, there are lessons to be drawn from the Still-Face Paradigm. If your mother still ignores you or doesn’t hear you in meaningful ways, the chances are good this began a long time ago. The best way of dealing with negative childhood experiences is to work with a gifted therapist.

If you are a parent raising an infant or small child, here are some key points.

1. Pay attention to your own level of engagement and attunement. Mothering in our species is learned, not instinctual, and if you are having trouble engaging with your child consistently, seek support; despite the mythology that the culture imposes on motherhood, many women have trouble staying present for lots of different reasons. They could feel overwhelmed by the demands of mothering, especially if they have more than one child; they could be unsure about whether they’re “doing it right;” or just not feeling comfortable with the high demands of early mothering, especially if it’s not shared with a partner to any degree. There’s zero shame in this admission; it has nothing to do with loving your child and, no, it’s not abnormal.
2. If you are hiring a caretaker, pay attention to how she interacts with your baby. Many women will find themselves having to go back to work full-time, so hiring child care isn’t a choice but a necessity. Yes, references are important but so is the quality of the interactions the nanny will have with your child, especially if you work a normal workweek. For children under three, you want someone who won’t be on her phone most of the time. Take the time to observe how the caretaker responds to your child and interacts.
3. Rethink “timeouts” if you use them. If you are giving your child a timeout to permit him or her to self-regulate emotions and calm down, that’s one thing and there’s no reason to ignore him or her if that is the goal. But if you are using the timeout as punishment or giving the child “the silent treatment,” you have mistaken verbal abuse for discipline; that becomes clear when you think about the Still-Face Paradigm. Using the timeout in this way pushes the child into self-defensive territory and forces the child to shut down his or her emotions to cope. Not good.

This post was adapted from text and research for my books, Daughter Detox: Recovering from an Unloving Mother and Reclaiming Your Life and Verbal Abuse: Recognizing, Dealing, Reacting, and Recovering.

Copyright © 2023 by Peg Streep.