Preamble to the Infant Peggy Study

One thrust of this research is to explore and trace how an infant learns about the physical world through interacting with it. Our physical human’s sense of being in a network of relations with other beings develops with such nurturance as the immediate community offers in the interactions of everyday life. Another thrust of this research is to explore and trace how that same human infant develops as a person through interactions with others in the immediate community of a specific nuclear family. Inasmuch as language becomes a primary medium of communication over time, the study also traces in part the development of her speech interpretation and production by examining snippets of communication and behavior.

The issues implicated are as old as our human ability to observe, act and reflect on living. Recording technologies and others enabled by expanding capacities in computing capabilities have made it possible to freeze in time behavior for subsequent review and analysis. The specific materials of the Infant Peggy Study (IPS) were captured between 1978 and 1984. The purpose was to construct a corpus sufficiently rich in content and detailed in texture to yield insights about the processes of learning in situations of everyday life. They have been copied, saved, digitized, organized and reorganized time and again since then. Our effort today is to prepare this material for analysis by us (and others) in the hope that advances in technology have and will make it possible to manage the interpretation of this mass of material now. That is the work underway at NLCSA.net.

Bob Lawler