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The role of maternal affect mirroring on the development of prosocial behaviors and social expectancies was assessed in forty-one 2- to 3-month-old infants. Prosocial behavior was characterized as infants' positive behavior and increased attention toward their mothers. Social expectancies were defined as infants' expectancy for affective sharing. Mothers and infants were observed twice, approximately 1 week apart. During Visit 1, mothers and infants were videotaped while interacting over television monitors for 3 min. During Visit 2, infants engaged in a live, 3-min interaction with their mothers over television monitors (live condition) and they also viewed a replay of their mothers' interaction from the preceding week (replay condition). The order of conditions was counterbalanced. Maternal affect mirroring was measured according to the level of attention maintenance, warm sensitivity, and social responsiveness displayed. A natural split was observed with 58% of the mothers ranking high and 42% ranking low on these affect mirroring measures (HAM and LAM, respectively). Infants in the HAM group ranked high on prosocial behaviors and social expectancy--they discriminated between live and replay, conditions with smiles, vocalizations, and gazes. Infants in the LAM group ranked low on these variables--they gazed longer during the live condition than during the replay condition, but only when the live condition was presented first; however, they did not smile or vocalize more. These findings indicate that there is a relation between affect mirroring and social expectancies in infants.

The effects of maternal interactive styles on the production of referential communication were assessed in four groups of infants whose chronological ages ranged between 0;6 and 1;8. Two groups of infants with Down syndrome (DS), one (n = 11) with a mean mental age (MA) of 0;8.6, and the other (n = 11) of 1;4.5, were matched on MA with two groups (n = 10 each) of typically developing infants. Infants were seen bi-monthly, for 8 months, with mothers, same-aged peers, and mothers of the peers. Results showed that High MA non-Down syndrome (ND) infants produced more words, and High MA DS infants produced more gestures when playing with mothers than peers. Mothers exhibited more attentional maintaining behaviours than peers, in particular to High MA infants, but they redirected the attentional focus of Low MA infants more. Sequential loglinear analyses revealed interesting contingencies between the interactive strategies of mothers and the referential communicative behaviours of their infants. Whereas maintaining attention increased, redirecting attention decreased the likelihood of the production of gestures and words in children. However, redirecting attention was followed by maintaining attention. Thus, mothers redirect the attentional focus in order to promote joint attention and referential communication. Furthermore, words and gestures of the children also promote joint attention in mothers. This highlights the reciprocal nature of these dynamic communicative interactions.

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