The temporal structure of face-to-face communication between mothers and infants.

Abstract

Thirty-seven infants were videotaped in face-to-face play with their mothers at 6, 13, and 26 weeks of age. Analysis proceeded at three levels: (a) The infants' periods of attention toward the mothers significantly overlapped with the mothers' facially expressive behavior. This was increasingly true as the infants grew older: Whereas the total proportion of time looking at the mothers decreased, the time looking at them while they were on did not decrease, (b) The infants' Vocalizations, Smiles, and Mouth Openings clustered into "runs" as described by previous investigators, but at 6 weeks these occurred only when the mothers were on. By 26 weeks of age, the infants' clusters of expression had become autonomous turns in a dialoguelike exchange, (c) Analysis of contingent sequences following the onset of infant attention showed that with infants 6 weeks old, mothers' facial greetings-Nodding, Smiling, and so forth-were only rarely effective in eliciting expressive greetings from the infants, but without the mothers' greetings the infants almost never made such responses. With 13-week-old infants, mothers more easily elicited greetings, and some spontaneous (unelicited) greetings by the infants could also be seen. With 26-week-old infants, the spontaneous greetings had become as frequent as those elicited by the mothers.Cognitive development demands a widening of the infant's horizons beyond the mother's face to include other animate objects and their actions as well as inanimate objects and their motions. Thus, infants' preferences change over the first 6 months so that faces, especially mothers' faces, occupy a declining share of their attention (Schaffer, 1977).Maternal behavior might be expected to change in response to this shift in infant preferences. Mothers might use more varied and exaggerated expressions (Brazelton, Koslowski, & Main, 1974;Stern, Beebe, Jaffe, & Bennett, 1977) to compete against other objects for infants' attention, for the This work was supported by the Spencer Foundation. We are grateful to Richard Nachman for his collaboration in recruiting the sample; to Lynn Barker, Bonnie Umeh, Stephen Muka, and the many coders who contributed their time and vision to the project.Requests for reprints should be sent to Kenneth

Maternal touch and maternal child-directed speech: effects of depressed mood in the postnatal period

“…Kaye & Fogel, 1980;Cohn & Tronick, 1987). In contrast mothers with depressed mood of 6-and 10-month-olds responded inappropriately in both the verbal and non-verbal domain in relation to their infants' development.…”

Infant affective responses to mother's still face at 6 months differentially predict externalizing and internalizing behaviors at 18 months.

“…Given that socialemotional development undergoes rapid change during this age period and that infants' expressions of positive emotion and responsiveness during mother-infant interactions increase (Cohn & Tronick, 1987;Kaye & Fogel, 1980), it may be that increases in self-regulatory behaviors are responsible for maintaining consistent rates of affect in the still-face interaction.…”

Mother-infant face-to-face interaction: Influence is bidirectional and unrelated to periodic cycles in either partner's behavior.

“…A periodic cycle is deterministic in that the frequency, phase, and amplitude do not vary over time (Gottman, 1981). Alternatively, stochastic events are autocorrelated over short intervals; that is, sequences occur nonrandomly (e.g., smiles following the onset of visual regard; Kaye & Fogel, 1980). Depending on the type of autocorrelation, sequences may also be cyclic, but not periodic.…”