P18C1 Clip Notes
| Notes: P018C1 | by Analyst, 11/10/2025, updating 10/27/25, 10/17/24 These notes are separated as they apply to the video Clip, transcribed Text, and action Trace |
| In the Clip | Peggy mouthing two fingers of left hand, reaches for, touches but does not grasp a colored cloth, her bib, then returns to sucking her fingers. At 1 minute, she lays her left hand on the bib and drags it toward her. Non verbal vocalization (NVV). Approaching her mouth, it drops off the table and falls down; she looks down. She lifts the bib back toward but not to her mouth. When Bob asks Mom if she dropped it, Peg watches him during talk. Then her right hand reaches for a diaper, brings it closer, then up and into her mouth. Why? [Contrast? Her fingers feel her sucking on them; she feels the bib with her tongue but not the sucking of her fingers.] Mom notes Peggy opens her grasp, looks at her hand, then closes again on the bib at 2:12-2:22. Why? [She is observing the motor activity she feels in her hand: empirical detail of building hand-eye coordination.] Bob removes the table at 2:34; Peggy NVV. With the colored bib in her left hand and the white diaper in her right, she drops the bib and continues to focus on it. Bob stops Mom from returning the bib to Peggy. Why? [This sets her a small challenge in her field of interests. at 3:15] She reaches for but fails to get the bib because she needs THAT hand for support to reach it. She stops at 4:10 (having just dropped diaper from right hand). Why? [Distracted by camera changes and dog barkings. Clip ends] |
| In the Text | Reviewed the dialogue for accuracy while reviewing the clip. Episode divisions are reasonable. On this review, elements I see as most noteworthy: the role of mouthing as possibly a means of confirming identity or implicit classification (e.g. this has cloth texture and not that of my own skin [by tongue & lips senses]). the issue of an infant’s appreciation of “the space” in which objects exist: does an infant need to build from experience an understanding of a depth-dimension for visual impressions varying as fluid shapes in a two dimenisonal plane? Peggy frequently scratched on surfaces with her fingers. When a loose fabric covered the surface, this act often brought things she wanted close enough to touch or grasp. Otherwise, this behavior seems mysterious. |
| In the Trace | As infants typically do, Peggy put her fingers in her mouth often. Likely there are several reasons. I will focus on the usefulness of the conjoined feelings of sucking and being sucked as an infant controllable standard in the execution of the “Do-Note” loop. I’ve proposed this notion as the primary way an infant can gain information about her surroundings that she can appreciate (by “appreciate” I mean “connect with what she already knows”). Self-directed activity, undertaken for whatever reason, often leads to surprises, disappointments, failures, even trouble. To the extent we can impute intentions to the infant, we will characterize non-achievement of these intended ends as “bugs” in the now common place of programmers’ jargon and will characterize them as simply as I can. Examining details of the Action Trace, four behaviors stand out as specifiable incidents: The first is noticeable is contrast with her commonly observed behavior: Peggy frequently flailed her arms with hands on a surface or scratched on surfaces with her fingers. When a loose fabric covered the surface, these acts often brought things she wanted close enough to touch or grasp. After sucking two fingers, she moved her left hand (from :33 to :42) across the edge of the table 3 times, drew her hand back to her mouth with eyes-on the cloth, finally touching the bib then drawing it towards her body and mouth. What I see here is a failed effort noted (the bug is manifest to observation, [her arm and hand were active but in a direction perpendicular to what was needed to contact the cloth], an unspecified parameter bug. Next, she looked-at the bib, directly reached out and touched it, then finally launched her arm and hand on to the bib and dragged it in her direction. She solved the problem and fixed the bug, ie. she recognized failure, understood the failure (in touching/bumping the bib) and modified her behavior to reach her objective at :58ff. Second is a possible lack of discrimination in motor control. At :58, Peggy launches her left arm and hand onto the bib; simultaneously, her right hand and arm make a similar move (with no target): an “underspecified effector” bug. This bug causes no failure to manifest at the right hand, so it need not be remedied there. The same bug appears again at 1:21 where both arms are moved identically, though the move is only useful for left arm of the two. Subsequently, at 1:36ff, the bug is explored using the right hand in relation to the diaper. The sequence here may be precisely how the discrimination of control distinction between the right and left hand is developed. Third, at 2:05 Peggy examined her hand and the bib, and her Mom described the action. This is precisely the sort of motor action combined with direct visual verification of the outcomes that experience-based integrations of sensory motor coordination requires. As the table is removed at 2:31, the right hand is diaper free, but re-grasps it at 2:34. Shaking the bib at 2:37ff leads to loss of grip on it at 2:45. Fourth, while looking at the bib on her left, at 3:37ff the right hand frees then re-grasps the diaper as if telegraphing intentions for the left hand, which can not perform those actions, on the bib – used as it is in supporting her body. It’s not clear how to characterize this behavior: is it an underspecified effector bug? Or could it be a “compensatory ineffective action” bug? |
| Setting,Props | Carriage House, Brookline: two cloths: colored Bib, white Diaper |
| Actors,Aims | Peggy and Mom; Bob on camera. Cloths were always everywhere in Peggy’s surroundings. |
| Take 2 | |
| Episode A: [00:00:02] |
Bob: There you go. Mom: Just put them down? Bob: Yeah… and we’re interested in seeing what Peggy does. Peggy: [after looking at things nearby, holding on to Mom’s arm with her right hand and sucking two left hand fingers, flails with left hand on the surface to draw the colored cloth to her; she pulls it off the table] |
| Episode B: [00:00:58] |
Peggy: “Haagh”, ( hairgh, /h–gh/ ) Bob: Oh, so she dropped it? Mom: No, she She’s still holding on to it, but it’s down. [out of sight, below table level] She’s holding it down…. She still has it clenched in her hand…. It comes… Peggy: [reaches for and grasps white cloth with right hand, draws it to her mouth]… P: “Haagh”}… |
| Episode C: [00:02:12] |
Mom: [about Peggy’s left hand] She unfolded her fist and looked at it and then grasped the cloth again. Bob: Well, maybe since she’s pulled them both off of this table, we’ll just take the table out of the way… |
| Episode D: [00:02:45] |
Bob: There it goes. [colored cloth drops out of reach, remaining in sight] Mom: Shall I restore it?… Bob: No… Bob: She may be disappointed, but I don’t think it will break her heart since she has something in the other hand…. It would be interesting to see when that occurs to her. |
| Episode E: [00:03:56] |
Peggy: [while reaching, opening and closing her left hand, she begins the same with her right hand]… Bob: Now she’s let go of both. Mom: She still has her eye on this one… Well, the other one is still within reach… |
| Episode F: [00:04:51] |
Bob: It looks like Peggy’s a little curious about the camera because I’m changing it. Dogs [barking offstage] |
| Episode G: [00:05:10] |
Bob: Well, I think we’ve come to an impasse. Let’s stop now and see how she likes the other toy. |
| Action Trace | P018C1at  |
| Episode | |
| Take 1 | 10/17/24 |
| Episode A: | Bob: There you go. GPL: Just put them down? {B: Yeah}… Bob: And we’re interested in seeing what Peggy does. [Peggy flails with left hand on the surface; to draw the cloth to her] Peggy: “Haagh”, ( hairgh, /h–gh/ ) Bob: Oh, So she dropped it? Mom: No, she She’s still holding on to it, but it’s down. She’s holding it down. She still has it clenched in her hand… it comes.[Peggy reaches for and grasps the white cloth with right hand, draws it to her mouth] {P: “Haagh”}… [about Peggy’s left hand] She unfolded her fist and looked at it and then grasped the cloth again. |
| Episode B: | Bob: Well, Well, maybe since she’s pulled them both off of this table, we’ll just take the table out of the way. Bob: There it goes. [colored cloth drops out of reach] Mom: Shall I restore it? Bob: No… She may be disappointed, but I don’t think it will break her heart since she has something in the other hand. It would be interesting to see when that occurs to her. [while reaching, opening and closing her left hand, she begins the same with her right hand]… Now she’s let go of both. Mom: She still has her eye on this one… Well, the other one is still within reach… |
| Episode C: | Bob: It looks like Peggy’s a little curious about the camera because I’m changing it. [dogs barking offstage] Well, I think we’ve come to an impasse. Let’s stop now and see how she likes the other two. |
| Episode | |
| Summary by AI |
Observers place items down to watch what Peggy does. Peggy flails with her left hand, attempting to draw a cloth toward her. She vocalizes (“Haagh”) during the interaction. There’s confusion about whether she dropped an item; clarification shows she’s still holding it, but lowered. Peggy grasps a white cloth with her right hand and brings it to her mouth; she then unfolds her left fist, looks at it, and re-grasps the cloth. After pulling both cloths off the table, the observers remove the table; a colored cloth falls out of reach. They decide not to restore the out-of-reach cloth, noting she still has another item and anticipating when she’ll notice. Peggy opens and closes both hands and eventually lets go of both items, though she keeps her gaze on one while another remains within reach. Peggy appears curious about the camera as its position is changed; dogs bark offstage. The session reaches an impasse, and the observers decide to stop and try the other two items next. |
| Narrative by AI |
In this short observation session, a baby named Peggy interacts with two cloths placed within her reach. The setup is simple: the cloths are offered on a low surface to see how she engages with them. Early on, Peggy flails with her left hand, using sweeping motions to draw a cloth closer. Her vocalizations punctuate the effort, suggesting exertion or interest rather than distress. The focus is on what she does spontaneously—how she reaches, grasps, and explores. Across several moments, Peggy’s grasping patterns become clear. She alternates between hands, at one point holding a cloth tightly in her fist and then unfolding her fingers to look at them before regrasping. She brings a white cloth to her mouth—a common exploratory behavior in infancy—indicating interest and a way of gathering information about the object. The commentary notes that while one cloth slips out of reach, she still has another in hand, which seems to buffer her reaction; disappointment is anticipated but not expected to be intense. As the interaction continues, one cloth drops to the floor and is not immediately restored. Observers note that Peggy may notice its absence later, but for the moment, her attention remains mixed: she still monitors the out-of-reach item while intermittently engaging with the one within reach. This creates a small test of attention and persistence—will she shift her focus fully to what she can access, or continue to reach for what is gone? There’s a brief distraction as the camera position changes and dogs bark offstage. Peggy appears curious about the camera, an example of how environmental stimuli can redirect infant attention quickly. Throughout, her hands open and close, sometimes simultaneously, suggesting both exploratory movement and the gradual coordination of reach-and-grasp actions. The sequence captures the fluid, moment-to-moment adjustments typical of early motor development. The session concludes when progress seems to plateau. The observers agree to pause and introduce other materials later. Overall, the observation offers a window into early problem-solving and sensorimotor exploration: Peggy tests how to bring objects closer, alternates hands, shifts attention with environmental changes, and manages minor losses (a dropped cloth) without distress. It’s a concise snapshot of everyday infant learning—incremental, curious, and shaped by what’s within reach. |
| Link Index | Panel P018, Language Development, Object Exploration, Social Interactions |
| Themes, Interplay |
