How Do You Science | Meet a Baby Scientist/Psychologist

Welcome back, young scientists. I’m Dr. Universe.  If you’re anything like me, you’ve got lots of big questions about our world.
 
Today we're talking about babies with Masha Gartstein, a psychologist who studies infant temperament at Washington State University. 

• Learn about the individual differences that make up a baby's temperament and how scientists study it in the lab with real babies (Hint: It involves Halloween masks!)
• Hear about Dr. Gartstein's job and her advice for kids who want to be scientists

Resources You Can Use

• Check out the Gartstein Infant Temperament Lab to learn more about Dr. Gartstein's work and see adorable photos of babies in the lab
• Watch the trailer for Babies, Season 2 (Netflix). Dr. Gartstein is on the episode called "Nature and Nurture." Some episodes from the first season are available on YouTube.

As always, submit burning questions at askdruniverse.wsu.edu. Who knows where your questions will take us next.

Transcript

Dr. Universe

Hey, friends. I'm Dr. Universe. If you're anything like me, you've got lots of big questions about our world. 

 I recently answered a question about babies. That's how I met Masha Gartstein. She's a professor and the chair of the Department of Psychology at Washington State University. She runs the Infant Temperament Lab. 

So, she works with babies and their families to figure out how babies handle situations that affect their feelings—whether that's the joy of playing a game with a caregiver or a little bit of fear of something new. 

I think her work is amazing, and I can't wait for you to hear all about it. Let's get started.

So the kind of science that you do is psychology. Can we talk first about what that is? 

Dr. Gartstein

My area, broadly speaking, is developmental science. I'm particularly interested in how what we think of in adulthood and later childhood as a personality, how that all develops and how that comes online. And when I say first develops, I mean out of the womb and in the first year of life. 

In that first year life and really through the third year, these individual differences—how reactive we are emotionally, how we're able to start regulating those emotions, that set of attributes and individual differences—is referred to as temperament. So, how fearful you are. How easily frustrated you are. Also, on the positive side, how much you enjoy things. Oh, I might enjoy things that are pretty intense. Later on we think of that as sensation-seeking. And, you know, babies don't go skiing, but they can enjoy being sort of tossed around or being tickled, right? Not all of them do, but some do. 

So, it's all of those emotional reactions but also the ability to regulate. What's I think unique about regulation in infancy is that it's kind of externally structured. Because parents really help to soothe and support their baby to lower that level of arousal.

Dr. Universe

So, emotional regulation is basically calming down—whether you're calming yourself down or someone else is helping you calm down?

Dr. Gartstein

Certainly in infancy and early childhood, that's what it looks like. It becomes a lot more advanced later on. There are all kinds of cognitive skills that we can use for regulation as we become proficient with language and more sophisticated thinkers and problem solvers. But in infancy, it really boils down to how much you're able to lower the level of arousal yourself and how much are your caregivers able to do that for you.

Dr. Universe

So, it's true that some babies are more easily frightened and some babies find it easier to enjoy things? It's just an individual thing? 

Dr. Gartstein

Well, yes and no, right? I mean, there are some things that most children would be uncomfortable with—being left alone, the dark. But some experience hesitation in the face of novelty more broadly.

Dr. Universe

Like new things. 

Dr. Gartstein

Yes. And you can say, "Well, gee, most kids go through a stage or a phase when strangers are something that they're very attuned to." They don't like unfamiliar adults especially. But for some, this is a more extreme situation than others. Some kids really struggling with daycare, for example, because it introduces so much novelty.  

I think what we see with kids who have that pathway of being more fearful and more hesitant with novelty is that they can have pretty intense emotional reactions to new situations and new experiences that others generally find tolerable.

Dr. Universe

Can we talk a little bit about how you test these things in babies? I watched your segment on the Netflix series about babies, and it was very cool. 

Dr. Gartstein

Oh, thank you. So, you know, one of the challenges—and, to me, one of the most fascinating things about working with infants—is that they're not able to really tell us much about themselves. We have to come up with other ways to gather this information. 

So, of course, we ask their parents because their parents are with them more than anyone else, and they're motivated observers. So, they know a lot about their babies. We have to be very careful in how we ask parents questions. Obviously, they're invested and not objective observers. So, we can kind of get at eliminating some of the biases by asking careful specific questions about the recent past. And we take judgment out of them as much as possible. 

But we also need other sources of information. So, we typically ask parents to come to the lab. The lab has advantages in that parents can come in, and we can set up a series of structured and standardized tasks—meaning that we do them exactly the same. We have the same stimuli. We give exactly the same instructions. And so we, for example, show babies new things—and if you saw the Netflix special, you saw our masks. Those work amazing. They're not super scary, but they're unfamiliar enough where they do elicit that kind of reactivity to novelty that we're after. 

Dr. Universe

Just to describe them, one looked a little bit like a witch, and one looked like maybe an old person. 

Dr. Gartstein

Yes. You know, it's funny. I actually need a new witch mask, and it's complicated now because these masks are considered vintage. They're hard to find and more expensive. 

But I'll tell you people often ask me about Halloween—since we're entering that time now—does Halloween matter? And do babies respond differently if they've experienced that? And the answer is really no. I mean, I've never controlled for that experimentally. But I can tell you that babies come in two months later, and you show them the masks, and their experience—at least what they present to us in terms of their experience with the masks—is like, no, they haven't been impacted by the fact that they've seen them before. 

That's something we were actually worried about. Were we gonna get these practice effects is what people call them. You've seen it before, so you're not reacting the same. If anything, across the first year of life, their reactivity increases. 

Dr. Universe

So, you poke your head out with a mask on, and then the baby reacts. It's right next to its mom, and it reacts—like either it's a little bit interested or scared?

Dr. Gartstein

Yeah, yeah exactly. But I'll tell you, that's exactly how it used to work. And then I have a collaborator who's really clever and taught me that you can put these masks on styrofoam heads. And that's actually a lot better because then research assistants don't ruin their hair. So, that's how we do it now. But other than that, what you described is exactly how it works. 

What we tell mothers—because it's important with the moms or whichever parents comes to the lab—it is important what they do because babies and children and adults, we all do a lot of social referencing, right? Which means how are you reacting to this? Are you scared? Should I be scared? There's a lot of that that goes on even in infancy. And maybe especially so because babies really rely on their parents to make meaning out of situations. So, we tell moms to not react to the masks themselves. Now if the baby becomes upset, obviously they're free to soothe their child, but in terms of managing their own reactions, we do ask that they do do that. 

Dr. Universe

And the baby is wearing a little cap. Can we talk about the cap?

Dr. Gartstein

Yes, it's like a swimmers cap. What it allows us to do—because it contains electrodes—we're actually able to measure brain activity while these emotionally eliciting situations unfold. The reason why that's super cool is that of course it gives us another source of information. 

And this is information that's a direct reflection of brain activity. We can see how that changes from baseline where things are really calm. And for us that baseline is what's your brain doing at rest. Because we can't tell infants like we can tell adult, "Hey, just sit there quietly and close your eyes, right?" Because we have to engage them to some extent so they're calm and alert. We do that by showing them videos. Baby Einstein is one of the ones that we use in the lab pretty frequently. In fact, I encourage my research assistants to watch them. I find them soothing, so just go to the lab and watch some Baby Einstein. But babies seem to like them. 

And then we can see how brain activity changes from that really calm situation to then the lab activity where we introduce the mask. We measure frustration. So, we introduce a toy that then the parent is instructed to put out of baby's reach. Some babies are like, "Whatever. You're still here. I can still look at you. This is still good." And others are like, "Oh no, no. I want that." For positive emotionality, we have moms play peekaboo with their babies. 

And so we can see what's happening in the brain as these emotional eliciting situations are unfolding in the lab, as we're observing behavior. So, if the baby is smiling, what's happening in the brain while we're observing that manifestation of positive emotionality and joy?

Dr. Universe

And the idea is to learn what's going on. But it's hard to know what to do when your baby's upset. Can that information help us figure that out?

Dr. Gartstein

Yes, well, that's the ultimate goal, to really understand how all of these characteristics come online. And of course, for me, because my background is in clinical psychology, I'm really interested in the regulation piece. So, how we manage our emotions and what we can learn from how that all begins and translate that into supporting adjustment, supporting wellness, and really decreasing the risk for things like depression and anxiety down the road. 

I think in part that prevention can be achieved by sharing information that we learned with parents and helping them understand their infant's temperament better.

Dr. Universe

That's amazing. I'm curious if you always knew that you wanted to be a scientist?

Dr. Gartstein

Well, that's a really interesting question. I mean, in part, yes. My earliest memory of wanting to be a scientist, I think I must have been like five or six. My father is a scientist. But his area of inquiry is biophysics, so I clearly didn't go down this road walking exactly in his footsteps. But I do credit him with sparking my interest in science and the scientific method.

Dr. Universe

What is the best part of your job?

Dr. Gartstein

There are two best parts of my job. One best part is when the babies come to the lab. That never gets old. For me, it's a joy. I really appreciate their honesty. Like, they are who they are. Nobody can be like, "Well, be good for the psychologist in the lab," right? I mean, they're going to come in, and they're going to do what they want to do. So, that's huge. 

And then the other part that I really see in many ways as my biggest impact is working with students. It's incredible to be able to train people, to give students skills that will take them to the next level and that will help them answer important scientific questions and get them on the pathway to science that they're eager to pursue. 

Dr. Universe

Do you have any advice for kids who are interested in becoming a scientist like you?

Dr. Gartstein

I would say, if you are in high school, and you're thinking about this, it's not too early to go and talk to somebody who does the kind of science that you're interested in and find out what it really means to be doing this work. What it is that they do. 

That will help you visualize it better so that you have a sense of what it is that you're striving towards, what your goals entail. Or maybe it will let you know that, "Oh, my goodness. That's not at all what I thought it would be, and I have other things I'd rather pursue." I mean, I think it's important either way. And most people who do what I do are really eager to talk to young people and share their wisdom and help them figure out whether or not this is right for them. 

Dr. Universe

Is there anything else that you wanted to add about babies or about science or anything?

Dr Gartstein

Well, our studies, our projects are ongoing. So, if anybody out there either has an infant and is interested in learning more or participating, please check out our lab's website. It's the WSU Temperament Lab. You can just Google it, and that should come up. Or if any students are interested in being research assistants, I'd love to hear from them as well.

Dr. Universe

That sounds amazing. Thank you so much for talking to me.

Dr. Gartstein

You're very welcome. Thanks for having me.

Dr. Universe

That's all for this episode, friends. Big thanks to Mash Gartstein for giving us a window into psychology and infant temperament. Check out the show notes for links to her Infant Temperament Lab if you want to learn more or see adorable photos of babies. 

As always, if you have a question for me, you can submit it at askdruniverse.wsu.edu. That's A S K D R U N I V E R S E dot W S U dot E D U. 

Who knows where your questions will take us next.