Video as Mirror to One Year Old
A teacher interests a one-year-old child in a live video image of himself. As you watch, speculate on what the young boy might be thinking. How may this experience be beneficial? The child could learn: 1) that video images are not mirror images or a TV image, 2) that video images can offer new information about the self and representations of the self. The child might approach the monitor to make his face grow larger, as he does with a mirror, but in fact his face grows smaller because he is moving further from the camera at his side. The child might hold his head when his image rotates as the camera rotates just to confirm that he himself is not turning upside down. These actions represent the child’s attempts to learn about how the medium works. In time, as he became fluent, he might use video as a tool to perfect a dance step or correct his tennis serve.
To see examples of children using instant video replay to watch themselves, type “instant video revisiting” in quotes into the Google search window.
Keywords: Ones, Child-Object, Cause/Effect, Self-Recognition, Exploration
Length of stand alone master video clip: 1 minute 21 seconds
