weaknesses

• • Using infants and babies in research can make it difficult to test their behaviours
  • Infants lack coordinated movements and tend to move their limbs randomly
  • Infants 'test' out facial expressions independent from any interaction with an adult or caregiver
  • It is difficult to distinguish between their general behaviours and specific actions in response to an adult
  • This means that there is no certainty to the findings
• • The Still Face Experiment was a lab procedure
  • This means that it is likely to lack ecological validity and so findings of the experiment may not give an accurate prediction of what would be seen in the real world
  • A lab experiment may also exaggerate or inhibit certain behaviours that would or would not be present in a real-world setting, such as the baby may already be heightened to being ignored by their parent as they are in an unfamiliar setting