Infant’s Emotions during the Mobile Conjugate Reinforcement

Yulin Yu, Verrazzano Class of 2024, completed major in Psychology with minors in Disabilities Studies and Sociology/Anthropology

During the Fall 2022 semester, I joined the Child Development Lab. I was interested in studying the development of infants, especially infants in Tajikistan because these infants are cradled in a gahvora. The gahvora is a cradle that restricts the infants' posture and movement for extended periods of time. I was interested in studying how this practice could affect Tajik infants, because restriction in the gahvora may reduce their emotional reactivity.

Before I could even start analyzing, I needed to learn how to code videos using Datavyu. With the help of the graduate students in the lab, I learned how to code and started to begin coding videos in the spring semester. During that semester, I developed a coding manual with information regarding how to code positive, neutral, and negative vocalizations. I was able to code the infant’s emotional reactivity while they conducted the conjugate reinforcement task where infants have one of their legs tethered to an overhead mobile. When the infant kicked, the mobile would move making the infant want to kick more to get reinforcement.

The two specific areas I wanted to focus on were on the baseline and extinction trial where kicking did not give them reinforcement. I expected that Tajik infants would show more vocalizations during the last trial because they were frustrated that the mobile was no longer reinforcing their behavior.