Infant-Mother Face-to-Face Interaction: Age and Gender Differences in Coordination and the Occurrence of Miscoordination

Abstract

To evaluate the extent to which infants and mothers are able to coordinate their behavior, the interactions of 54 mother-infant pairs--18 each at 3, 6, and 9 months of age--were videotaped. Coordination was evaluated with 2 measures: (1) matching--the extent to which mother and infant engage in the same behavior at the same time; and (2) synchrony--the extent to which mother and infant change their behavior with respect to one another. Mother-infant pairs increase their degree of coordination with infant age, but the proportion of time they are coordinated is small. Mother-son pairs spend more time in coordinated states than mother-daughter pairs. The results suggest that interactions be characterized in terms of their movement from coordinated to miscoordinated states rather than only in terms of their degree of coordination. The gender differences are discussed in terms of their importance for the developmental differences in females and males.

Presencia del padre y calidad de la interacción madre-hijo: un estudio comparativo en familias chilenas nucleares y monoparentales

“…El juego permite así la expresión de placer, de malestar o necesidad de ayuda, brindando una instancia en que el infante puede aprender acerca de la toma de turnos y la reciprocidad, así como sobre la regulación emocional en los otros y en sí mismo (Tronick, 1989;Weinberg & Tronick, 1994).…”

Sobre a maneira de produzir dados no estudo da interação social

“…Assim, quando as crianças eram observadas mesmo em interações com suas mães, os observadores categorizavam os comportamentos dos bebês que se adequavam bem às suas expectativas, isto é, as reações às estimulações das mães. Era preciso um conceito novo de atividades de bebês (Bell, 1968) para construir categorias que pudessem registrar as próprias atividades dos bebês que fossem direcionadas a estimular suas mães (ver, por exemplo, Sorce, Emde, Campos & Klinnert, 1985;Tronick, 1989;Tronick & Cohn, 1989). Como no caso do desenvolvimento de bebês, um crescente corpo de dados coletados em vários estudos, finalmente, mostrou a sensibilidade bastante precoce de crianças no que diz respeito aos relacionamentos sociais complexos e aos contextos de comunicação (ver Saarni, Mumme & Campos, 1998).…”

On the generation of data in the study of social interaction

“…Thus, when infants were observed even in interactions with their mothers, observers categorized behaviors of babies that fitted well to their expectations: Reactions to mothers' stimulations. It needed a new concept of babies' activities (Bell, 1968) to construct categories which could register babies' own activities directed to stimulate their mothers (e.g., Sorce, Emde, Campos, & Klinnert, 1985;Tronick, 1989;Tronick & Cohn, 1989). As in the case of early infant development, a growing corpus of data collected in various studies finally discovered infants' very early sensitivity with regard to complex social relationships and communication contexts (see Saarni, Mumme, & Campos, 1998).…”