
Not only was the first weekend of May our first glimpse of summer it was also the weekend of the fifth annual ‘Impfest’ at Imperial Colleges South Kensington campus. The pPOD team were delighted to have been invited to have a stall and as a new member of the pPOD team I was particularly excited to showcase the attachment theory research that the team have been working on. The day proved to be exciting throughout with a chance to disseminate the Healthy Start, Happy Start and ACORN studies as well as to mingle with other researchers presenting an eclectic mix of vibrant, innovative projects from the best in science and art at Imperial.
Our stall was made up of a range of educational activities which were demonstrated by members of the pPOD team much to the enjoyment of the Impfest visitors. Over the course of the weekend hundreds of people visited our stall with staff, students, alumni and members of the public enthusiastically wanting to learn about advances in attachment theories and how these are present in our research. We really enjoyed speaking to a vast range of people and answering your thought provoking questions.
Similarly to previous exhibitions such as ‘lates’ evening at the Science Museum in August our activities were based around attachment. We covered some of the early theories of attachment including:
Harlow’s monkeys 1950’s experiment involving baby rhesus monkeys having a surrogate mothers; one made of wire and one covered in soft terry towelling cloth. Four of the monkeys could get milk from the wire monkey and four received food from the terry cloth mum. Results were that both groups of monkeys spent the most time with the soft mother even if she had no milk. The baby would eat from the wire monkey and then cling back onto the soft mother. Therefore the soft mother provided a sensitive response and the safe base that this surrogate produced was more important to the baby than food alone.
Goren and Colleagues 1975 a ground breaking study which highlights the significance of forming early attachments and relationships. The study found that by tracking new born babies eye movements that they start to develop a preference for looking at human faces over other objects or shapes in the first few hours after birth.
A pin-the-feature-on-the-baby poster interaction, where members of the public were asked to choose which features they thought a baby would use to form close relationships. In fact a new born uses all of their feature to form attachments such as: gazing (eyes), crying, sucking, smiling and vocalizing (mouth), grasping, moving and clinging (body), listening to voice (ears), recognizing familiar smells (nose).
The atmosphere of the weekend was really positive and it was great to speak to such a vast range of people that were interested in our stall. The pPOD team would like to thank everyone involved in Impfest as we believe it was a great experience and another success story for the pPOD team to celebrate.
We hope you had fun because we certainly did and we look forward to seeing you next year!
Author: Emily Pearson
Our stall was made up of a range of educational activities which were demonstrated by members of the pPOD team much to the enjoyment of the Impfest visitors. Over the course of the weekend hundreds of people visited our stall with staff, students, alumni and members of the public enthusiastically wanting to learn about advances in attachment theories and how these are present in our research. We really enjoyed speaking to a vast range of people and answering your thought provoking questions.
Similarly to previous exhibitions such as ‘lates’ evening at the Science Museum in August our activities were based around attachment. We covered some of the early theories of attachment including:
Harlow’s monkeys 1950’s experiment involving baby rhesus monkeys having a surrogate mothers; one made of wire and one covered in soft terry towelling cloth. Four of the monkeys could get milk from the wire monkey and four received food from the terry cloth mum. Results were that both groups of monkeys spent the most time with the soft mother even if she had no milk. The baby would eat from the wire monkey and then cling back onto the soft mother. Therefore the soft mother provided a sensitive response and the safe base that this surrogate produced was more important to the baby than food alone.
Goren and Colleagues 1975 a ground breaking study which highlights the significance of forming early attachments and relationships. The study found that by tracking new born babies eye movements that they start to develop a preference for looking at human faces over other objects or shapes in the first few hours after birth.
A pin-the-feature-on-the-baby poster interaction, where members of the public were asked to choose which features they thought a baby would use to form close relationships. In fact a new born uses all of their feature to form attachments such as: gazing (eyes), crying, sucking, smiling and vocalizing (mouth), grasping, moving and clinging (body), listening to voice (ears), recognizing familiar smells (nose).
The atmosphere of the weekend was really positive and it was great to speak to such a vast range of people that were interested in our stall. The pPOD team would like to thank everyone involved in Impfest as we believe it was a great experience and another success story for the pPOD team to celebrate.
We hope you had fun because we certainly did and we look forward to seeing you next year!
Author: Emily Pearson