A Review of Bruner and Sherwood’s Study of Peek-a-Boo

A Review of Bruner and Sherwood’s Study of Peek-a-boo

Done by: Jessica Jacob Chackoria (H00145350)

Module: Human Development and Intelligence (A48HD)

Word Count: 1402

A review of Bruner and Sherwood’s study of ‘Peek-a-boo’

‘Peek-a-boo’ is a universal game played between mothers and their infants. The structure of such mother–infant games can serve both as an index of infants' social skills and as one context in which infants acquire these skills (Gustafson, Green & West, 1979). In early stages, the fact that mothers always reappear in the end helps build the child’s trust and helps in securing their bond (Tibbs, 2003). Thus, ‘peek-a-boo’ though just a game, can prove to be extremely beneficial for a child’s development. Studying its effects can be of great value to parents, teachers and other caregivers. This is the main reason why this paper is being reviewed. Since it has now been 35 years since this paper was published, its relevance in the present day and its cross-cultural validity shall also be discussed later.

In the Bruner and Sherwood paper, the developmental effects of peek-a-boo were longitudinally studied, with emphasis being placed on “conversion of peek-a-boo procedure into rule structure, without intending to minimize the importance of pre-adapted patterns of response in making the game possible”. 6 mother-and-infant dyads were observed, in a laboratory, over a 10 month period, when the infants were between 7 and 17 months of age, but only the development of 1 baby, Diane has been elaborately described. 3 other babies: Nan, Lynn and Sandy have been briefly mentioned. Once in a fortnight, the mothers were asked to play any of their favourite games with their infants in the laboratory, and these sessions were videotaped and subsequently observed. The fact that all but 1 of the dyads chose to play peek-a-boo, shows the popularity of the game. Studying videotapes of the sessions was a good method to study...