Dr. Beebe: We study mother-baby non-verbal communication.
I like to call it the baby's non-verbal language.
But really, it's the mother-baby non-verbal language
or the parent-baby non-verbal language, because the baby only has a language
if he has like a partner.
Katharine: Dr. Beebe, welcome to AEI.
Dr. Beebe: Thank you.
Katharine: I'm delighted that you're here.
Dr. Beebe: Me too.
I'm really delighted to be here.
Katharine: So, you are a professor of Medical Psychology at Columbia University...
Dr. Beebe: Yes.
Katharine: ...and an expert on infant development.
For two decades, you've been directing a research laboratory on early mother-infant communication?
Dr. Beebe: Yes.
Katharine: What specifically does your research focus on?
Dr. Beebe: We study mother-baby nonverbal communication.
I like to call it the baby's nonverbal language, but really, it's the mother-baby nonverbal
language or the parent-baby nonverbal language.
Because the baby only has a language if he has a copartner.
Katharine: When you say nonverbal language of a baby, can you say more about what that
looks like?
What does that mean?
Dr. Beebe: Well, it's very nuanced.
You're looking at all the little details of things the babies do.
Sometimes they do something so tiny that you don't quite catch it in real time.
But, sometimes they make a large movement that you do catch it.
You're looking at little movements of the mouth opening.
Babies do that a lot.
You're looking at tiny little shifts of gaze, shifts of gaze.
You could be looking at head orientations, like a little tiny...and you sense that, right?
It's a little tiny thing or if a baby turns away like this, can you sense that this is
different from this, right, the more oblique one?
Katharine: Right.
Dr. Beebe: They can go all the way over here or they could even arch up over here.
Some of it is tiny, some of it is big.
You're looking at films to see exactly how the baby's responding or initiating moment
by moment with the partner.
Katharine: You use a unique research method called video micro analysis...
Dr. Beebe: Yeah.
Katharine: ...to uncover a kind of a level of detail, which apparently is hard to see
in real time.
Dr. Beebe: In real time.
Yeah.
Katharine: Can you explain exactly how that works?
And why is it that you use that method to study this?
Dr. Beebe: Yeah.
We call it a social microscope video micro analysis.
And, it's precisely because these events are so fast, you know, they're called split-second
events.
Some of these behaviors last about a third of a second.
Video micro analysis, you have to...
Even slowed down film wouldn't really get you the level of detail that we need.
Video micro analysis is a way of getting to every little tiny movement and gesture that
the baby makes in order to understand more about how the mother and the baby are responding
to each other.
Katharine: It's a kind of, as I understand, it's kind of a frame by frame analysis with
potentially dozens of frames per second.
Dr. Beebe: Yeah.
Katharine: Is that correct?
Dr. Beebe: Usually, you have 30 frames a second.
In my lab, we were actually analyzing the second.
But so much can happen in a second that you are really analyzing a half second by a half
second.
It's called frame by frame analysis but that's really a misnomer.
When you're doing the research, it's coding every second as the second unfolds, as the
mouth goes across the second, right?
Or across the second.
So, you're getting at second by second what's happening in the gaze, what's happening in
the touch, what's happening in the face, what's happening in the hands.
Katharine: With mothers, between mothers and babies, the babies that you've been studying
are four-month-old babies, is that correct?
Dr. Beebe: That's right.
Katharine: Why four-month-old babies?
Dr. Beebe: Yeah.
Everyone asks us this.
Three to four months is really the flowering of the baby's social capacity.
Babies are social from birth, but, they don't have the full display of the expressions.
By three to four months that is really flowering and you suddenly have a different baby from
three to four months.
A profoundly social, communicative, emotional baby.
Though you've seen all of this from the beginning, but it really flowers by three to four months.
Three to four months is a moment where babies have enough capacity to regulate their states
that they can actually engage in face-to-face communication for, let's say, five minutes.
We tried to do it at two months, we couldn't really do it because the babies fell asleep
on us.
We woke them up and kinda got them involved.
And then, they usually get over roused and then you get them right, nice down to where
you could really engage with them face-to-face, and then they go to sleep.
Katharine: So, that's two-month-old babies?
Dr. Beebe: Yes.
So...
Katharine: So, at 60 days, they weren't ready for this research but by 130 days...
Dr. Beebe: Yeah.
Three to four months.
Katharine: Right.
They are right.
Dr. Beebe: And also, face-to-face communication is really, really important because it elicits
the baby's most advanced social capacities at that age.
It's four-month, face-to-face communication that we do.
Katharine: Exactly how does this occur?
Where do you get this footage from?
How do you operationalize this?
Dr. Beebe: Right.
We invite a mother and a baby to the lab.
We actually invite the fathers too, but they often don't come.
Most of the research is mother on film.
Although, all the things that are documented about mothers and infants are similar for
fathers and infants, or nannies and infants, or caregivers and infants.
It's all the same communication system, right.
You invite the mother and the baby to the lab.
You put one camera on the baby's face, one camera in the mother's face.
It makes a split screen like a sports cast.
So, you could watch each one as each one is communicating with the other where lots of
things are almost simultaneous.
Katharine: Then you watch those side by side.
Is that right?
Dr. Beebe: When you see it, it looks side by side but you have to remember that it's
actually face-to-face.
We ask the mother to just interact with the baby as she would at home or play with the
baby as she would at home, but no toys.
That's the only difference.
No toys.
Yeah.
Katharine: Then you film...there's these two cameras, so you're filming the baby's
face and the mother's face...
Dr. Beebe: And no one else is in the room.
Katharine: No one else is in the room, as they're interacting for 20 minutes?
Dr. Beebe: About five minutes?
Katharine: Five minutes?
Dr. Beebe: Yeah.
Katharine: Why so short?
Dr. Beebe: Well, we only really analyze two and a half minutes.
Katharine: Two and a half minutes, why?
How can that be?
Dr. Beebe: Because it takes a long time to do this micro analysis and, sort of the research
guidelines are two to three minutes.
We can predict them in development with two and a half minutes.
So, we do two and a half minutes.
Katharine: What you're saying is that in two and a half minutes of this kind of video
between a mother and a four-month-old infant, you can learn enough about that relationship,
the nature of the interaction to be making predictions...
Dr. Beebe: Yeah.
Katharine: ...months and months into the future.
Dr. Beebe: Yeah.
Isn't that astonishing?
Katharine: Yes.
So, what...how...
Dr. Beebe: Yeah.
It is fascinating.
Katharine: Say more about that.
Dr. Beebe: You know, these behavior patterns are very repetitive.
How people behave is very repetitive.
Actually, one of the most interesting things about the way we think about the research
is the baby is developing expectancies.
He's learning what to expect because it happens over and over and over.
Things happen in similar ways.
So, in two and a half minutes, you're gonna get a lot of examples of how this pair interacts.
Katharine: Like what?
Can you give me an example of what the baby is expecting, like, what is it?
If I'm watching that, how does that happen?
What is actually...
What would I see?
Dr. Beebe: Well, if I'm a little whimpery or distressed, I learn to expect that you
are sympathetic, you go, "Hmm."
Right, or, if I'm really flowering up into a beautiful smile, I learn to expect that
you smile right back.
Or, I learn that when I turn, I'll be the baby now when I turn away, you chase me.
The more I go away, the more you chase me.
And the more I go away, the more you chase me.
And the more you chase me, the more I go away.
I learn that that's how it is between us.
Katharine: I see.
And so, are there particular patterns that you have associated with more positive development
for babies?
Dr. Beebe: The most important thing seems to be that the social partner joins the baby
where the baby is.
If I'm the baby and I'm really happy and you're responding, that's easy.
I think most people are able to do that.
The harder ones are when the baby is whimpery or frowny or distressed, to also join with
the babies, "Oh, oh, that's how you feel, oh..."
Right?
Katharine: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Beebe: Or sometimes, babies really go down.
They're very still and wary and so, you could join the baby there, like waiting for the
baby.
Not completely motionless, but, just sensing the baby's dampened state and joining the
baby where the baby is dampened.
And waiting for the baby to find another place that the baby goes to.
Katharine: Is this something that is common or is it only some babies that do this?
Dr. Beebe: Some babies and some mothers.
Katharine: Yeah.
I mean, in other words, do all babies have these periods of being dampened that way?
Is it just sort of normal baby behavior?
Dr. Beebe: I think an extreme dampened baby is more toward a depressed baby.
But, all babies whimper.
All babies have little sad moments.
All babies have little distressed moments.
Most babies have glorious, you know, smile moments.
The really dampened babies are toward the depressed babies.
Katharine: You've been doing this research now for several decades...
Dr. Beebe: Several, no.
Five.
Katharine: A lot of decades and you have followed these dyads, these infant-mother
dyads up to a year of age.
And then, some...
Dr. Beebe: Now 30 years.
Katharine: Years and years later.
Dr. Beebe: Yeah.
Katharine: I mean, what have you found from that?
Dr. Beebe: We do have two groups of mothers and babies that we're following.
One group was videotaped starting in 1985, and one starting in 1992.
The 1985 babies, I think we had 82 babies and we found 45 at ages 25 to 30.
It's not a lot, but it's half the group.
We are finding that we can predict aspects of the adult development from how the mother
and the baby or the stranger and the baby, stranger is like a novel partner with the
baby.
How they coordinated.
In this case, we were looking at how they coordinated vocal turn-taking.
Vocal turn-taking is really interesting.
Like if I make a sound, now it's your turn.
Say something.
Katharine: I sneak a little sound back.
Dr. Beebe: Now, am I gonna wait for you, am I gonna jump in on you?
Katharine: So, if I'm the baby, I am taking...
I'm a four month old baby and I'm taking turns with you like that.
Dr. Beebe: That was your turn and there was a tiny pause and then I came in.
That's my turn.
But sometimes, there's no space at all, no pause at all between my sounds and your sounds,
my turn and your turn.
Sometimes there's a long pause.
The idea is how do the pair follow each other's durations of sounds and silences, turns and
pauses between terms?
We found that mid-range following predicted secure babies and too tight following or not
following well enough, predicted insecure babies.
Katharine: By mid-range following...
Dr. Beebe: I'm following you but I'm not like...
I'm not slavishly following you, like, "What is it?
What is it?
What is it?"
Really intensely following you.
Katharine: Right?
It's a more relaxed kind of interaction.
Dr. Beebe: Yeah.
That seems to be optimal and we're finding it again at 30-year follow up.
Katharine: So that the four-month-old babies who were in a relationship with their primary
caretaker, their mother, who had formed these kinds of, sort of, turn-taking...
Dr. Beebe: Turn-taking rhythms.
Katharine: Right, relaxed kind of turn-taking rhythms, that something about communicating
in that way...
Dr. Beebe: Yeah.
Katharine: ...was a foundation for things that went on for years.
Dr. Beebe: Yeah, we can tap it 30 years later which is kind of astonishing.
Katharine: Yes.
Dr. Beebe: Yeah.
Katharine: You're a pioneer in this field.
You've been working on this, as you just said, for...
Dr. Beebe: Five decades.
Katharine: ...for five decades.
And over that time, what are the core findings about babies?
Dr. Beebe: Well, you know, the most overall thing is, these babies are incredibly sociable
and emotionally capable.
They understand everything that's happening at a nonverbal level, right?
Katharine: Mm-hmm.
Dr. Beebe: They don't have language the way we do.
They don't have the level of cognition that we do, but they're very smart.
They have a kind of an intelligence that tracks the sequence of things, this predicts that.
They're always anticipating what's going to happen next.
They have an extraordinary social capacity where they're learning what to expect from
their social partner.
That's the broadest, most important thing that comes out of it.
These babies are amazingly communicative and sociable.
Yeah.
Then there's several other really interesting things, like the baby's nonverbal language
is co-created, right?
It isn't the baby's language, it's the mother-baby language, right?
It's co-created and the mother influences the baby, but the baby influences the mother,
right?
The mother adjusts to what the baby just did, and the baby adjusts to what the mother just
did.
Katharine: This might not be conscious on the part of the mother, is that correct?
Dr. Beebe: Right.
I think all the things we study are a little bit too fast to be conscious, to be really...
I think it's a system that's out of awareness.
You could bring it into awareness by focusing in on it and showing somebody, but it's kind
of an out-of-awareness system.
Yeah.
Katharine: I think another thing that you've focused on is that these are the really sort
of finely tuned sensitive systems, that are highly sensitive to distress.
Dr. Beebe: That's right.
Katharine: Is that correct?
Can you say more about that?
Dr. Beebe: Yeah.
If the mother is distressed or if the baby is distressed, it changes the nature of the
interaction, the patterns of the interaction.
For example, maternal depression or maternal anxiety.
But, poverty, everyday current stress, so, anything that really stresses the mother-baby
system, will disturb it.
This early communication system is very sensitive to distress and it will bias the system away
from a kind of a more optimal range.
Katharine: You've done research specifically, for example, with depressed mothers?
Dr. Beebe: Yeah.
Katharine: What are the findings in that work?
Dr. Beebe: Yeah.
Well, one interesting example, right.
Because there's many, many findings.
One interesting example is, these are mothers who are depressed at six weeks postpartum.
How does that postpartum depression alter communication once the baby is at four months?
And, the ones who are depressed at six weeks, those mothers are really following the baby's
visual focus.
As the baby looks and looks away, and looks and looks away.
They're not really tracking that as well.
But they're over tracking the baby's face, overly responsive to the baby's face.
And when the baby's positive, they're overly thrilled.
They're far more responsive than the non-depressed mother.
When the baby becomes sad, the mother is far more disappointed than the ordinary mother.
She's overly reactive to the baby's normal ups and downs, positive and negative, almost
as if she's using the baby's face to see if she's loved by the baby.
Because a depressed mother often is very unsure of that.
That just being an example of the detail that our approach could give you and it has important
implications for treatment.
Because every time you have a very specific interaction pattern revealed by the research,
you can treat it more easily.
Katharine: Wait, when the mother is behaving that way, if she's depressed, she's having
that kind of overreaction, what is the impact on the baby?
Dr. Beebe: Well, the babies are different too.
These babies can be a little bit emotionally withdrawn from those mothers.
Katharine: Because it's sort of too intense somehow.
Dr. Beebe: Yeah.
Katharine: Hey, everyone.
Thanks for watching part one of our discussion with Dr. Beatrice Beebe.
If you enjoyed what you saw, remember to like the video or leave us a comment and if you
want to see more, check out part two.