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[Campos] Emotion is a nonverbal language.
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[woman] Is your tummy ticklish?
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[Campos] Emotions reveal the cognition,
the understanding of the baby.
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And, furthermore,
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emotions are the nonverbal communication
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of the baby towards the parent,
and the parent towards the baby.
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Therefore, I thought that emotions
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were a royal road—
one royal road—
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to the study
of the baby's development.
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[narrator] In this study,
babies between 9 and 12 months
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are brought into the lab and placed
on a large, plexiglass top table.
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Half of the table
has a checkerboard pattern,
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just underneath the surface.
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But halfway across is a visual cliff,
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which the baby can tell
drops off steeply.
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The plexiglass top continues,
so it's perfectly fine to proceed.
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But the baby isn't so sure,
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and this is a big drop
for a baby just starting to crawl.
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She wants to get across
to get the toy,
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but she's cautious, and looks
to the opposite end of the table
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where her mother is.
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The parent is instructed to smile
or make a fear face.
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If the mother is posing a fear face,
the baby typically does not cross
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this stair step downward,
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this modified visual cliff
or visual step.
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On the other hand,
if the mother poses a smile,
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or somehow poses
a nonverbal communication
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that is not prohibitive,
but encouraging,
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the child is much more likely
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to cross over to her.
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This particular study demonstrates
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the role of nonverbal communication
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in determining the child's
behavior in uncertain context.
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A baby will, when they encounter
something ambiguous, something uncertain,
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will typically look
to the significant other—
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the mother, the father,
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a grandparent, the caregiver—
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in order to figure out what to do.
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So, by 11-12 months of age,
the baby is already doing
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what all of us do
when something unusual happens.
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We look around to figure out
how other people are reacting.
