The Still Face Task

Lab 3

The Still-Face Task

The Still Face Task examines infants’ early expectations for social interaction.

The task was originally developed by Tronick and colleagues (1978).

Still Face Task

Initial phase: Mother engages the baby in face-to-face interaction

Still face phase: Mother becomes suddenly still, looking at the baby with a neutral expression, without talking or touching the baby

Reunion phase: Mother engages the baby again

Still Face Effect

Baby shows reduced attention and positive affect in the still face phase compared to the two interactive phases (initial and reunion phases).

Video of Tronick explaining the Still-Face Effect

What does the still-face effect indicate?

Infants’ expectations for social interaction

Attention changes indicate the infant noticed the change in the mother’s behavior

Affect changes indicate the infant experienced violations of his/her expectation for affect sharing

Micro-Scoring of each phase

Attention: looks to the mothers face-yes/no

Facial affect: mutually exclusive smiles, neutral, frowns (scored with sound off)

Vocal affect: mutually exclusive positive/neutral, negative, no vocals (exclude hiccups, burps, etc,)

Today’s Exercise

PART 1 : DATA COLLECTION

On your computer, watch an infant participating in the Still-Face TaskVideo is linked here (removed)

Using your Scoring Sheet, rate the infant’s attention level and facial affect during each of the 3 phasesYou will use a Likert Scale, with 1 being non-attentive

or negative, 4 being neutral, and 7 being very attentive or positive.

Today’s Exercise

Part 2: DATA ANALYSIS

Open the linked Excel file and save it to your H: Drive

Input your attention ratings for Participant 12 (the infant you watched) for each phase

Using ‘Insert Function’, find the mean and standard deviation (SD) for attention level during each phase

Create a column (bar) graph of the data setComplete the question sheet

Finding ‘Means’ and ‘SDs’ in ExcelMean = The average score across all participants

SD= How much on average, each participant’s score deviated from the Mean

We will calculate these in the Excel sheet:

1) Select the cell where you want to do the calculation

2) At top of toolbar, have ‘Formulas’ selected

3) Click ‘Insert Function’ in toolbar (furthest to left)

4) In the window that opens, select ‘AVERAGE’ to find the Mean

or, select ‘STDEV’ to find the SD.

5) Drag and highlight the corresponding column of numbers from Participant 1-12, hit ‘Ok’

6) Round your answers to 2 decimal places,

e.g. 2.1678 would be 2.17

Making your Bar Graph

1) Highlight the data for all 12 participants (including the titles for each phase) Do not highlight the words “Participant 1, Participant 2, etc”, or the

Means and SDs

2) At the top of the toolbar, select ‘Insert’ and below, select ‘Chart’

3) On the left, select ‘Column’, and choose the first option (“2-D Clustered Column”)

4) Label your axes by selecting ‘Layout’ at top of toolbar, and then selecting ‘Axis Titles’

5) To label your x-axis (along bottom of graph), select ‘Primary Horizontal Axis’ and then ‘Title Below Axis’ –you can then type in the title ‘Participants’

6) To label your y-axis (along side of graph), select ‘Primary Vertical Axis’ and then ‘Rotated Title’ –then type in ‘Attention Rating’

7) To print your graph, first you need to move it to it’s own sheet: Right-click inside the box that your graph is in (but outside the borders

of your actual graph) Select ‘Move Chart’ Select ‘New Sheet’, ‘Ok’

Before you Leave Today:

Submit:

GraphScoring/Question Sheet

-Make sure your name is on both, and save a copy of your Graph