PARENT–INFANT SYNCHRONY: A BIOBEHAVIORAL MODEL OF MUTUAL INFLUENCES IN THE FORMATION OF AFFILIATIVE BONDS

Synchrony, a concept coined by the first researchers on parenting in social animals (Rosenblatt, 1965; Schneirla, 1946; Wheeler, 1928), describes the dynamic process by which hormonal, physiological, and behavioral cues are exchanged between parent and young during social contact. Over time and daily experience, parent and child adjust to the specific cues of the attachment partner and this biobehavioral synchrony provides the foundation for the parent–infant bond (Fleming, O’Day, & Kraemer, 1999). Affiliative bonds—defined as selective and enduring attachments—are formed on the basis of repeated exposure to the coordination between physiological states and interactive behavior within each partner, between partners, and between the physiology of one and the behavior of the other. Such social bonds, in turn, set the framework for the infant’s emotional development and shape the lifelong capacity to regulate stress, modulate arousal, and engage in coregulatory interactions, achievements that are central components of the child’s social– emotional growth (Feldman, 2007a). Moreover, the experience of biobehavioral synchrony in the first months of life sets the biological and behavioral systems that enable the child to provide optimal parenting to the next generation, thereby forming the cross-generation transmission of attachment patterns (Feldman, Gordon, & Zagoory-Sharon, 2010a). During the sensitive period of bond formation, infants’ brains are sensitized to the mutual influences between physiological systems, behavioral indicators, and their interactions. Studies in mammals propose that this process of synchrony—the system’s sensitivity to the coordination of physiology