ABSTRACT
The descriptive, observational, and recording techniques that author used to quantify patterns of Navajo mother–infant interaction were those of the young discipline human ethology. Clyde Kluckhohn, the first to conduct child development research with the Navajo, would have approved, of the use of these techniques, for he felt "the need for an adequate quantitative basis for generalizations" in his own research. Ernie research, does not need to be defended, but when emic data are unknowingly and un-systematically mixed with etic data, the result is a mare's nest of confusion. The goal of the ethological method is simply to consciously strive for as high a degree of etic "purity" as possible. All of the research reported focused on Navajo infants in interaction with their mothers. In studying the behavior of the human neonate, developmental psychologists and ethologists have increasingly made use of the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale.
