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Observation report

The Rouge Test has been developed as a tool to assess a basic acquisition of a concept of Self as revealed by recognising one’s own image in a mirror. Two researchers developed independently the same technique: Amsterdam with infants (1968 doctoral dissertation, first published in 1972), and Gallup (1970; Gallup, McClure, Hill ; Bundy, 1971) with chimpanzees and monkeys. In both cases, the researchers needed to find a non-verbal test.

The structure of the Rouge Test involves three phases: (1) observation of a child’s spontaneous behaviour in front of a mirror – before proceeding to the next phase, the child must look at her/ himself in the mirror at least once; (2) Rouge phase, when the experimenter or mother surreptitiously applies a rouge (or blue) mark on child’s cheek near the nose, where the child cannot see it); (3) observation of the children’s reactions to their own mirror images (altered by the rouge mark).

All children are observed for the same minimum period of time to see whether they do/do not show any signs of attention to the rouge mark, which would indicate self-recognition according to Amsterdam (1972) and Gallup (1970). According to Amsterdam (1972), children at the age of six to twelve months of age see their reflections as a ‘ sociable playmate’. They begin to admire themselves and show embarrassment from twelve months onwards, and by the time they become two years old their self-recognition reaches up to 65%. In general, children pass the Rouge Test around ; gt; 18 months of age.

Children start to become self-aware and more self-conscious at the age of two, they evaluate their behavior and appearance in terms of both others and their own standards (Asendorph, J. 1993). According to Bertenthal and Fischer (1978) and Lewis and Brooks-Gunn (1979), a 2 year olds self-development indicates the growth od self-awareness before using verbal labels for themselves. It has been observed in some people and animals that after getting their vision back after being born blind, they initially react to their mirror Image as If it were a whole new separate entity (John, A. 992). Animals have also been noted to pass the test, which include the great apes, like Humans, though it develops after 18 months (Archer, J. 1992), Bonobos (Miller, J. 2009), and Chimpanzees (Miller, J. 2009), though, when it comes to most animals, the reactions to the mirror images were hostile at first. Since the original studies, there have been many replications of Amsterdam’s results with infants. This study is a partial replication in which the classification of children according to a pass/fail category will be taken for the rouge-related behaviours.

The main purpose of this small scale study is to evaluate the utility and reliability of the coding scheme and measures used. (II) METHOD CHECKLIST PARTICIPANTS (describe here the sample you have analysed) The five participants who took part in this test were four babies, two males and two females, aged between 9 months and 18months, and a male chimpanzee named Rusty. PROCEDURE (tick the correct option/s) The study was based on: Naturalistic observation1 Structured observation1? Specification (e. g. , laboratory vs. field; direct vs. ideotape): The test was a field test, and was done viewing the participants whose responses were recorded on videotape by a friend or family member and kept an eye on by their mother. CODING (tick the correct option/s) Coding scheme based on: Momentary events1 Duration events1? Physically based codes1? Socially based codes1 Mutually exclusive codes1? Non-mutually exclusive codes1 Exhaustive coding1? The specific coding scheme used was as follows (definition of each category): CRITERION CATEGORIES (necessary to pass the Rouge Test) ode 26 – baby turns head to look at Rouge mark in the mirror without touching it code 27 – baby shows Rouge mark to mother or experimenter code 28 – baby touches Rouge mark with finger while looking at it in the mirror code 29 – baby touches other cheek (not cheek with Rouge mark) with fingers while looking at it in the mirror (this simply shows poor knowledge of reflecting properties of mirrors, not of one’s image) code 30 – baby touches Rouge mark with toy, tissue or anything else (not fingers) while looking at it in the mirror OTHER CATEGORIES

A- baby points to image in mirror B- social behaviour towards image/mirror (kisses, hugs, etc. ) DATA ANALYSIS (tick as many options as necessary) Our recording strategy involved: Event coding1? Interval coding1 Continuous recording1? Intermittent recording1 Data analysis concerning: Frequency of coded behaviours1? Duration of coded behaviours1? Rate (frequency/min. )1 Subject classification (pass/fail)1? (III) RESULTS The results of the observation are summarised in TABLE 1. TABLE 1 – Tick the relevant box for the observed behaviours. | Lilith (9 months old) | Emma (18 months old)| Rusty (Chimp) | Tej | Roan | | CODE26 |* |* |* |* |* | | BTHLR | | | | | | | CODE 27 | | | | | | | BSR | | | | | | | CODE 28 | |* |* | | | | BTR | | | | | | | CODE 29 | | | | | | | BTOC | | | | | | | CODE 30 | | | | | | | BTRO | | | | | | | | | | | | | CODE A | |* | |* | | | BPI | | | | | | | CODE B |* | | |* | | SBI | | | | | | Table 1 shows that the most common code was (insert values based on YOUR data): BTHLR and the least common was/were: BSR, BTOC, BTRO There were N = .. 2.. participant(s) who did not pass the Rouge Test. Their ages were (fill based on your coding): Between 9-12 months The non-criterion categories (Codes A and B) proved: frequent 1 infrequent 1? ambiguous1? useful1 (IV) RELIABILITY CHECK Reliability tests were conducted in order to check the level of agreement between observers. This analysis was limited to the criterion categories for the Rouge Test.

As all criterion categories were measuring the same ability, a first overall comparison between observers was conducted, based on the total numbers of criterion events detected by each observer for each participant (see Table 2). TABLE 2 – Comparison between two observers (insert YOUR data as Observer 1*). | | Lilith | emma | Rusty | tej | roan | | | Ob. 1 | Ob. 2 | Ob. 1 | Ob. 2 | Ob. 1 | | Tot ob. 2 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 0 6 | | AGREEMENTS | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 5 | | DISAGREEMENTS | 2 | 1 | 1 | 5 | 1 | | | | | | Overall inter-observer simple agreement %: (9/19) x 100= 47. 368% | | | | A second more precise inter-observer agreement was computed, based on the Cohen’s Kappa, using the current version of the SPSS. | | Agreement for chance: K= O. 4 | SR’s coding is provided as second observer but you can use data from another student if you prefer – in this case you need to specify the student N of your colleague and replace SR’s values with hers/his. The comparison between the two observers was based on the behaviour onset time: Yes1? No1 (V) DISCUSSION Develop your discussion by dealing with the following points: The results procured from the participants proved the findings from the previous studies which showed that babies below the age of 18 months failed to recognize themselves in the mirror, and considered their mirror images as another “ playmate”, and those children 18 months and those babies around the age of 18 months and a bit above recognized themselves and noticed the odd mark on their faces and tried to take it off (Amsterdam, B. 1972).

Though the results of this study supported and proved the findings from the previous studies, the inter-observer agreement was not in sync with each other. The inter-observer agreement was 47% which was very low as the novice observer and the original observer coded slightly differently from each other. The coding scheme was a bit too detailed, making it slightly confusing for the observer to note down the separate codes in their separate columns. Though the novice observers’ coding was more thorough and in some parts of the videos s/he seemed to notice more codes where the original observer did not see and record, and in other parts the original observer noted down more codes than the novice observer.

The coding scheme was not too reliant as there were some schemes which were not at all observed by the observers while viewing the babies performances in the videos. Not all of the rouge related behaviours worked for the observer as they were some codes which were not used at all by the observer and the novice observer. Though detailed, the codes were quite simple to understand and use, though a couple of them might have been unnecessary. There were codes like BTRO, or Baby Touches Rouge with Object, which didn’t make much sense to the observer, as the baby was either not interested in his or her mirror image at all or was focusing on touching the rouge mark with their own fingers to use an object.

BTOC was also found unnecessary by the observer because the baby could not understand the concept behind reflection. The elimination of these codes would not have an effect on the overall results of the rouge test. There were not many issues with being a novice observer, be it a student observer or the given observers codes as the observation done on the babies behaviours towards the rouge marks on their faces took the same amount of time and recording.

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