Premium
Abstract
Author(s) -
Jaffe Joseph,
Beebe Beatrice,
Feldstein Stanley,
Crown Cynthia L.,
Jasnow Michael D.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
monographs of the society for research in child development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.618
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1540-5834
pISSN - 0037-976X
DOI - 10.1111/1540-5834.00136
Subject(s) - psychology , developmental psychology , bayley scales of infant development , rhythm , cognition , novelty , social psychology , philosophy , neuroscience , psychomotor learning , aesthetics
Although theories of early social development emphasize the advantage of mother‐infant rhythmic coupling and bidirectional coordination, empirical demonstrations remain sparse. We therefore test the hypothesis that vocal rhythm coordination at age 4 months predicts attachment and cognition at age 12 months. Partner and site novelty were studied by recording mother‐infant, stranger‐infant, and mother‐stranger face‐to‐face interactions in both home and laboratory sites for 88 4‐month‐old infants, for a total of 410 recordings. An automated dialogic coding scheme, appropriate to the nonperiodic rhythms of our data, implemented a systems concept of every action as jointly produced by both partners. Adult‐infant coordination at age 4 months indeed predicted both outcomes at age 12 months, but midrange degree of mother‐infant and stranger‐infant coordination was optimal for attachment (Strange Situation), whereas high (“tight”) stranger‐infant coordination in the lab was optimal for cognition (Bayley Scales). Thus, high coordination can index more or less optimal outcomes, as a function of outcome measure, partner, and site. Bidirectional coordination patterns were salient in both attachment and cognition predictions. Comparison of mother‐infant and stranger‐infant interactions was particularly informative, suggesting the dynamics of infants' early differentiation from mothers. Stranger and infant showed different patterns of vocal rhythm activity level, were more bidirectional, accounted for 8 times more variance in Bayley scores, predicted attachment just as well as mother and infant, and revealed more varied contingency structures and a wider range of attachment outcomes. To explain why vocal timing measures at age 4 months predict outcomes at age 12 months, our dialogue model was construed as containing procedures for regulating the pragmatics of proto‐conversation. The timing patterns of the 4‐month‐olds were seen as procedural or performance knowledge, and as precursors of various kinesic patterns in the outcomes of 12‐month‐olds. Thus, our work further defines a fundamental dyadic timing matrix—a system that guides the trajectory of relatedness, informing all relational theories of development.