The temporal coordination of early infant communication.

Abstract

The ability to coordinate expressive behaviors is crucial to the development of social and emotional communication. Coordination involves systematic sequencing of behaviors from two different modalities that have some temporal overlap. A bootstrapping procedure was used to determine whether preverbal 3- and 6-month-old infants sequence vocalizations, gazes at their mothers' faces, and facial expressions into pairs of coordinated patterns nonrandomly. Smiles and frowns were highly coordinated with vocalizations. Smiles were also coordinated with gazes at mothers' faces, which became stronger with age. Vocalizations were not coordinated with gazes at mothers' faces. These findings illustrate the manner in which infants temporally coordinate communicative actions and provide new evidence that facial expressions (particularly smiles) are central to early infant communications.

The Ontogenesis of Jealousy in the First Year of Life

“…Notably, it contrasts with the matching of infant and maternal positively valenced facial displays that have frequently been observed (P. Harris, 1989;Hertenstein & Campos, 2004;Termine & Izard, 1988;Yale, Messinger, Cobo-Lewis, & Delgado, 2003), as in Termine and Izard's work (1988) where investigators found that mothers' displays of joy induced greater smiling in their infants. Given that works from a broad range of perspectives, including learning, imitation, affect sharing, affect contagion, socially induced affect, attunement, and social referencing (Cohn & Tronick, 1988;Crockenberg & Leerkes, 2000;Druckman & Bjork, 1994;Feinman, 1992;Field & Fogel, 1982;Gewirtz & Pelaez-Nogueras, 1992;Haviland & Lelwica, 1987;Izard, 1978;Jaffe, Beebe, Feldstein, Crown, & Jasnow, 2001;Meltzoff & Moore, 1997;Reddy, Hay, Murray, & Trevarthen, 1997;Stern, 1985;Termine & Izard, 1988;Tronick, 1989;Yale et al, 2003) have regularly documented the infant's mirroring of mother's positive affect, and although there is considerable consensus that if an infant is impacted by her mother's positive affect the direction of effects is positive, an infant's dampened positivity as a consequence of exposure to mother's heightened positivity if it is directed toward another child represents an exception that is difficult to reconcile without attributing it to the infant's internally organized sensitivity to loss of exclusivity, or what may considered a rudimentary form of jealousy. We would submit that without an interpretation of jealousy, it is difficult to explain why infants are disturbed by an adult's positive affectivity toward a social object, but only if the adult is an attachment figure (Hart et al, 1998a).…”

Different Kinds of Infants´ Smiles in the First Six Months and Contingency to Maternal Affective Behavior

“…Results may also indicate an ongoing process of complexification and expansion of a babies' ability to coordinate signals expressed during social interactions (Lin & Green, 2009;Seidl-de-Moura et al, 2008;Yale et al, 2003).…”

Early detection of core deficits in autism

“…Coordinated facial expression, vocalization, and gaze express positive and negative emotions and have been found to be highly patterned and consistent by the age of 3 months [Yale et al, 2003]. Between 9 and 15 months of age infants coordinate smiles, eye contact, and gestures to communicate about objects in episodes of joint attention [Carpenter et al, 1998;Messinger and Fogel, 1998].…”

“…In the first 6 months of life, smiling is the most prevalent infant social behavior [Kaye and Fogel, 1980;Weinberg and Tronick, 1994;Yale et al, 2003] and there is a strong correlation between smiling and gazing at the mother [van Beek et al, 1994]. Coordinated facial expression, vocalization, and gaze express positive and negative emotions and have been found to be highly patterned and consistent by the age of 3 months [Yale et al, 2003].…”