What do wire monkeys, a baby with no features and lots of yellow t-shirts have in common? They were all at the science museum ‘lates’ event on the 26th August.
Once a month the science museum doors are opened in an evening to an over 18 audience, where 3-4,000 people regularly attend. The theme on the 26th August was childhood and the pPOD team were invited to talk about the importance of early parent-infant relationships and attachment.
Once a month the science museum doors are opened in an evening to an over 18 audience, where 3-4,000 people regularly attend. The theme on the 26th August was childhood and the pPOD team were invited to talk about the importance of early parent-infant relationships and attachment.
| There was an exciting buzz in the office a few days ahead of the event where the team unleashed their creative side making props for our drop-in stall. We covered some of the early attachment studies, including:
|  Our replica of Harlow's monkeys |
- A pin-the-tail-on-the donkey style poster interaction, where members of the public were asked to choose the features on a baby's face which they thought babies use to help form attachments (it’s all of them – the eyes, ears, nose and mouth).
Images from Goren and colleague's 1975 research
The pPOD team Demonstrating and talking about key aspects of developmental psychology to such a broad and diverse audience initially seemed like quite a challenge but the team took this on (Rachael Ryan, Dot King, Ellen Grimås, Jane Iles, Paul Ramchandani, Lorraine Als, Fatima Valencia Agudo and Charlotte Phillips). This was a really exciting and interesting opportunity to talk to the hundreds of people that visited our stall. We enjoyed answering different questions and talking to people from a range of backgrounds about the science underlying our work and sharing some of the current pieces of research we are running in the pPOD group; the Healthy Start, Happy Start and ACORN trials.
There was a fantastic atmosphere across all of the events at the science museum, including Paul Ramchandani’s talk on ‘First love: do early parent-infant interactions shape our future?’ where we saw the importance of how caregivers notice, respond and anticipate cues from their infants and how this influences parent-infant attachments.
This was an amazing opportunity to be involved with such an event at the science museum and we particularly liked how the evening was set up with a huge variety of talks, stalls, workshops and activities, linked by the central theme of childhood and displayed throughout the museum – including being taken back to our own childhood with the giant games in the flight room. We look forward to exploring other lates events.
There was a fantastic atmosphere across all of the events at the science museum, including Paul Ramchandani’s talk on ‘First love: do early parent-infant interactions shape our future?’ where we saw the importance of how caregivers notice, respond and anticipate cues from their infants and how this influences parent-infant attachments.
This was an amazing opportunity to be involved with such an event at the science museum and we particularly liked how the evening was set up with a huge variety of talks, stalls, workshops and activities, linked by the central theme of childhood and displayed throughout the museum – including being taken back to our own childhood with the giant games in the flight room. We look forward to exploring other lates events.
Authors: Rachael Ryan and Dot King
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