Still Face Experiment
In 1975, Dr. Ed Tronick and his colleagues presented the “still face experiment”. What they learned is key for all of us to know regarding our interactions with children. The study showed that very young infants already have several basic building blocks of social cognition in place. 1) They are able to recognize the relationship between facial expression and emotion, 2) They’re able to regulate their own affect and attention to some extent.
During the experiment, when the caregiver’s face was still, the infants’ response was very complex. The infant showed subtle facial cues such as dampened smiles, yawns, and sideways glances at the mother. The infants’ attempts to re-engage with their caregivers during the still face portion, suggested they are able to plan and execute simple goal-directed behaviors. The experiment shows how early interactions between infants and caregivers may predict later social-emotional variables. For example, how the caregivers baseline sensitivity and interactive style, affect the infants’ later attachment classification at age 1, internalizing (e.g. depression, anxiety) and externalizing (e.g. aggression, impulsivity) behaviors at 18 months, and behavior problems at age 3. Watch the experiment to the right.
Adamson, L., & Frick, J. (2003). The Still Face: A History of a Shared Experimental Paradigm Infancy, 4 (4), 451-473 DOI: 10.1207/S15327078IN0404_01
Research shows safe, healthy, and nurturing relationships actually change our biology. Sometimes we might think kids need “things” to be happy and well-adjusted. Realistically, what kids need are stable caring adults who can do these 6 things:
1. Available & present
- 15 minutes 1-on-1 time everyday doing what they want to do, or what they want to talk about
2. Approachable
- Make EYE CONTACT (put down the phone)
3. Consistent
- Firm and kind (hold the line–boundaries)
- Follow through–every choice has a consequence; positive or negative
- Reinforce desired behavior in the moment
4. Empathic
- Listen without judging or fixing
- Recognize and label the emotion
5. Fun
- Move, play, sing, and dance together
6. Warm & Nurturing
- Smile
- 5 to 1 positive to negative ratio of interactions
- Give 8 second hugs
Packing the Parachute
“How in the world did you know that?” asked Plumb.
“I packed your parachute,” the man replied.
Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude.
Shaking his hand the man replied, “I guess it worked!”
Plumb assured him, “It did. If you’re chute hadn’t worked, I wouldn’t be here today.”
Plumb reflected how the sailor, unknown to him must have spent hours in the bowels of the ship carefully assembling each parachute for pilots he didn’t even know. Grateful for the service of this sailor, Plumb poses the question, “who has done something to help make your day safer, easier, or more pleasant? Or, have you witnessed others “packing” for someone else?”
We are all impacted by those who provide what we need to make it through the day. Consider who contributes to packing our student’s parachutes. Will they be safe when they fall?
They will all fall at some point (i.e. experience adversity, make mistakes, and fail). Unfortunately, when Plumb landed he fell into enemy hands. Where do our students land when they fall? Are they met with hostility, criticism, contempt, demands to toughen up, or stonewalling? Those responses will not build their resilience (the ability to bounce back from adversity). What will build their resilience is being met with support from a stable caring adult who knows and understands how it feels to “fall into enemy territory”. To pack their parachute safely we can:
- Help them recognize how they feel, e.g. “You look sad” (or disappointed, frustrated, angry, upset, sad…)
- Empathize, e.g. “That must have been really hurtful” (or painful, disappointing, frustrating, upsetting…)
- Convey caring, e.g. “I know what that’s like.” (or “I don’t know what that’s like.”)
- Listen attentively, without judging or fixing, e.g. put down the phone or set aside other distractions and give them our undivided attention.
- Ask them what they need, e.g. a break, a resource, support, time…
- Express belief in them to overcome the adversity, e.g. Identify prior situations when they overcame.
- Help them problem solve, if needed:
- e.g. SODAS: Identify the situation, list options, compare the disadvantages and advantages, and plan a solution.
Our students need someone in front of them to cheer them on, behind them to have their back, and next to them so they are not alone. Catch them doing good, no matter how small the effort. They are doing the best they can with the skills they have. Behavior that is reinforced is more likely to be repeated.
Consider the impact of taking the time to make eye contact and say, “hello,” “please,” “thank you,” “way to go!” “I’m so proud of you.”
Thank you to everyone who helps pack the parachutes for the student’s in WCSD everyday!
- Families (nuclear and extended family members)
- Employees (teachers, administrators, counselors, nurses, mental health clinicians, secretaries, custodians, paraprofessionals, food servers, transportation, business administrators, our Superintendent and District leaders)
- Community Partners (law enforcement, medicine, mental health, supports and services)
You can start building
RESILIENCE
by fostering
SAFETY, CONNECTION & CONFIDENCE
in the children around you.
ACE Study (Adverse Childhood Experiences)
In 1998 two doctors brought together by the Centers for Disease Control and Kaiser Permanente healthcare plan in San Diego, initiated what is now famously
known as the ACE’s study.
ACE stands for Adverse Childhood Experiences, also known as traumatic experiences.
ACE’s are extremely stressful experiences in childhood that can alter brain development and have lifelong effects on health and behavior.
Although there are many ways a child may experience trauma, doctors Felitti and Anda found there were 10 types of adversity, or trauma, most commonly mentioned in the study linked to negative health outcomes.
From this, the study teaches us that, as the number of ACE’s a person has experienced before age 18 increases, so does their risk. A person with an ACE score of 4 or more showed the following outcomes in adulthood:
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- Heart disease increased by 240%
- Cancer increased by 190%
- Drug Abuse increased by 1,030%
- Suicide Attempt increased by 1,120%
- Depression increased by 460%
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Washington County School District
currently has 39 Wellness Rooms.
See our Wellness Rooms featured on
Find your Wellness Room:
Self-regulation is the ability to manage our thoughts, emotions and behavior.
We all have an emotional temperature. We tend to like comfortable emotions: joy, surprised, excited, happy, and prefer to stay in our comfort zone. When we begin to feel sad, afraid, frustrated, or angry our emotional temperature goes up, activating our sympathetic nervous system, and we feel less comfortable. Therefore, we want to do something to return to our comfort zone, aka self-regulate, by activating our parasympathetic nervous system. The things we do to regulate our emotions can be healthy or unhealthy, determined by the long-term impact they have on our health and well-being.
Wellness rooms teach healthy coping skills to regulate our emotions, calm our nervous system (bring our emotional temperature down) thereby allowing us to access our prefrontal cortex so we can
choose how to respond rather than react.
What we experience creates new neural pathways in our brain. This process is called neuroplasticity and simply said, it is the brain’s tendency to continue to restructure (rewire) itself based on experience. When students experience the calming physiological effects of engaging in sensory soothing activities, they learn these activities calm them down (soothe their nervous system) and they will choose to do these activities instead of engage in maladaptive behavior when they become upset or dysregulated.
Empowered with emotion-regulation
Identifying our triggers is an important step in learning what increases our emotional temperature (e.g. activates our nervous system).
When we recognize how we feel in response to things happening around us, we gain self-awareness about what we need & when to use coping skills to self-regulate. Recognizing what we need and giving ourselves permission to follow through, is a great act of Self-Care. Self-Care has been defined as anything we do to nurture our well-being.
Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl taught:
“Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”