Forty-two single mothers with young infants were given access to a computer-mediated social support (CMSS) network concerned with parenting issues. The network operated 24 hours per day over a period of 6 months. It permitted public message exchanges, private e-mail, and text-based teleconferencing for as many as 8 participants at any one time. During the 6 month intervention, the 42 women accessed the network over 16,670 times. Individual differences in participation were significantly associated with indices of social isolation from peers. A descriptive analyses of the messages exchanged on the network disclosed that 98% of the replies to concerns posted in the public forum provided positive social support. The majority of the supportive replies fell into the category of emotional support, followed in order by informational and tangible support. Both the self-report data following the intervention, and qualitative data extracted from online discussions indicated that close personal relationships and a sense of community developed in this novel social environment. Finally, an analysis of pretest-posttest changes in the level of parenting stress revealed that mothers who participated regularly in this CMSS community were more likely to report a decrease in parenting stress following the intervention.

The communicative abilities of infants, revealed in the still-face (SF) procedure, were examined in 2 studies comparing behavior toward people and "interactive" objects. In Experiment 1, thirty-two 3-and 6-month-olds were presented with an object and a person (mother or female stranger). The SF effect was produced only by mothers and strangers. Positive affect clearly established person-object differentiation; infants smiled at people but rarely at the object. In Experiment 2, twelve 3-month-olds were presented with 4 stimuli: a female stranger and 3 objects with features varying in similarity to an abstract, smiling face. Again, infants reserved their smiles for the person. Positive affect appears to be a primary index of young infants' social-perceptual competence and personobject differentiation.Researchers suggest that the intent to communicate is present in infants by 7 or 8 months of age (e.g., Bruner, 1975;Kaye, 1982), but the degree to which the communications of younger infants are socially motivated is controversial. Advocates of the view that very young infants display intentional communication include Trevarthen (1983), Tronick (1981), Brazelton (1982, and their colleagues, who have studied behavioral synchrony between infants and adults. They report that infants adjust their behavior in response to different types of adult stimulation. For example, Tronick, Als, Adamson, Wise, and Brazelton (1978) asked mothers to distort the feedback they normally provided to their 1-to 4-month-olds by shifting from an active, face-to-face interaction to a silent, expressionless pose. The general procedure consists of the following three brief periods: (a) the mother stimulates the baby in a playful, social manner (e.g., contingently smiling and vocalizing); (b) the mother poses a still face (SF) with a neutral expression; and (c) the mother interacts normally again. Infants' apparent distress (e.g., loss of positive affect and attention) during the SF period led researchers to conclude that very young babies are sensitive to changes in maternal behavior, especially facial expressions; after attempting to engage their mothers in a communicative exchange, infants stopped smiling and turned away

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