Over at Psychology Today...

I've been continuing the theme of investigations of small children's inner experience... the latest installment can be read here.

Feeding ourselves

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Have you ever fed a baby? Put a mental camera on yourself while you do so. If you're anything like me, you'll find that you're instinctively making your own mouth do the things you want the infant to do. Open wide, that's it; wrap those lips around the morsel; close them up and swallow. In fact, I would defy you to keep your own mouth closed while meeting this abiding challenge of parenthood: getting some nosh down your little one's gullet.

What's the explanation? Some evolved mechanism for automatically modelling eating actions, to ensure that those who depend on us are well fed? Something to do with mirror neurons? In acting out the eating, I am configuring my own facial muscles in the way I want the toddler to do. That means that, at some level, I must be mapping the features and actions of my own body on to his. Generally I think mirror neurons are a little overrated (I do not see, for example, how they can be anything more than a useful platform for social cognition and theory of mind) but here's something they could be helping out with.

I've noticed that the reflective feeding effect generalises, too. When you are helping a toddler to brush her teeth, you will probably find that you are sometimes contorting your lips in the way you want the child to do. The problem with the 'modelling' theory is that it suggests that this behaviour is intentional; that we parents are doing this for a purpose, to show the child how the thing should be done. It could be something much more reflexive, unconscious and automatic: a by-product of evolution, psychological development, or both.

Then, the other day, I noticed Isaac doing the same thing. He was feeding me a bit of ice lolly and mouthing the grateful acceptance he wanted my mouth to show. He's five, but he too was unable to suppress this instinct to model the feeding process. It's not only parents who can't keep their own selves still. My hunch is that the effect is specific to actions that involve the face and mouth, but I could well be wrong about that. What do readers think?

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• Mirroring Behavior (scientificamerican.com)

Dutch edition

The Dutch translation of the book is now available. The publisher is Contact and the translator is Rogier van Kappel. More information on the edition is available here. You can order the book here.

Chatty baby

Thanks to @alphamummy and @DulwichDivorcee: I can't resist reposting this.

Children and digital technologies

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As you might have guessed from the previous post, I have been writing about how exposure to digital recording technologies might affect children's developing memory and sense of self. This has also given me a chance to reflect on how Athena and Isaac might have been affected by the attention they've received. You can read the final piece (which appeared this weekend in the FT) here. As ever, I'd love to know your thoughts.

What about the other one?

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One question came up a few times at the readings last week, and it's not the familiar one about what Athena will make of all the attention. Is there a chance, some people asked me, that Isaac will be miffed that I didn't write a book about him? Am I guilty of parental favouritism, by omitting to give him the same treatment that I gave his big sis?

Readers of this blog will know that I have been writing about Isaac quite a bit, although admittedly there's not much about him in The Baby in the Mirror. I'll also admit to a certain bias in focus towards the first-born: although I've kept detailed notes on both children (Lord, how they differ), Athena undoubtedly got the lion's share of the attention. I'm not alone in this, however. I've just been reading David Buckingham, Rebekah Willett and Maria Pini's fascinating forthcoming book Home Truths: Video production and domestic life, which describes a detailed study of the use of the camcorder in the home. Their work, inspired in turn by Richard Chalfen's classic studies of home movies, describes several instances of preferential treatment for first-borns, at least as far as the video camera is concerned. One participant, Aiden, described what happened in the case of his eldest son, Zac: 'My father-in-law filmed Zac a lot but then lost interest. Yeah, the first one got filmed a lot.'

The best answer to this is to follow the example of Brian Hall, whose wonderful Madeleine's World showed me what was possible in this kind of writing. Hall's dedication page reads as follows:

FOR CORA,

with apologies for this book being about Madeleine

AND FOR MADELEINE,

with apologies for the same reason

After the tour

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Thanks to everyone who came along to the events in London this week. I had some great conversations and had to deal with some searching questions, some of which I'll try to answer in more detail in future posts.

I recently spoke to Dr Alvin Jones for his radio show in Durham, NC. You can listen to our conversation by going to his website and scrolling down until you see the US jacket cover. Click on the image and you should hear the recording.