An intensive longitudinal investigation of maternal and infant touching patterns across context and throughout the first 9-months of life.

Touch is a central component of mothers' and infants' everyday interactions and the formation of a healthy mother-infant relationship. Twelve mothers and their full-term infants from the Midwest, USA participated in the present study, which examined the quality and quantity of their touching behaviors longitudinally at 1-, 3-, 5-, 7-, and 9-months postpartum and within two normative interaction contexts (face-to-face, floor play). Findings revealed that mothers' and infants' individual touch patterns, varied according to context, infant age (time), and the specific type of touch examined. At 1-month postpartum, dyads coordinated their touch via behavioral matching and were especially reliant on rudimentary types of touch with soothing and regulatory properties (static/motionless touch, stroking). As infants aged to 9-months, dyads transitioned to a more complex form of tactile synchrony characterized by the parallel use of complementary types of touch (grasp, poke, pull). This evolution of tactile synchrony may reflect infants' growing behavioral repertoire and increased capacity to use more refined forms of touch. To our knowledge, this study was the first of its kind, uniquely contributing to the scant knowledge about the development of mother-infant touch and synchrony and offering direct implications for early care practices and infant health and well-being.

Abstractness emerges progressively over the second year of life.

words, terms not referring to here and now, are acquired slowly in infancy. They are difficult to acquire as they are more detached from sensory modalities than concrete words. Recent theories propose that, because of their complexity, other people are pivotal for abstract concepts' acquisition and use. Eight children (4 girls) and their mothers were observed longitudinally and extensively from 12 to 24 months of age. Video recordings of mother-infant free play with toys were done every two weeks in a laboratory setting with families in the USA. Children progressively use a range of words referring to abstract concepts, with a major shift from 12 to 15 months and again from 22 to 24 months, but the qualitative data testify an incremental growth of abstract concepts. We identified a progression in the acquisition of words denoting abstract concepts in relation to the overall productive vocabulary, suggesting that having more abstract terms in one's vocabulary promotes faster language acquisition.

Effects of social games on infant vocalizations*.

The aim of the present study was to examine the contextual effects of social games on prelinguistic vocalizations. The two main goals were to (1) investigate the functions of vocalizations as symptoms of affective arousal and symbols of social understanding, and (2) explore form-function (de)coupling relations between vocalization types and game contexts. Seventy-one six-month-olds and sixty-four twelve-month-olds played with their mothers in normal and perturbed tickle and peek-a-boo games. The effects of infant age, game, game climax, and game perturbation on the frequency and types of infant vocalizations were examined. Results showed twelve-month-olds vocalized more mature canonical syllables during peek-a-boo and more primitive quasi-resonant nuclei during tickle than six-month-olds. Six- and twelve-month-olds increased their vocalizations from the set-up to climax during peek-a-boo, but they did not show such an increase during tickle. Findings support the symptom function of prelinguistic vocalizations reflecting affective arousal and the prevalence of form-function decoupling during the first year of life.

Better or Worse: a Study of Day-to-Day Changes over Five Months of Rosen Method Bodywork Treatment for Chronic Low Back Pain.

BACKGROUND: Fluctuations of good days and bad days-in physical symptoms and emotional states-are common for individuals with chronic illness. This pilot study examines these fluctuations during bodywork treatment. PURPOSE: We analyzed changes in daily self-reports over a period of five months for five individuals who received weekly treatments of Rosen Method Bodywork (RMB), which uses touch and words to enhance body awareness of physical sensations and emotional states. SUBJECTS AND DESIGN: Five subjects (aged 31-56) who had chronic low back pain (CLBP) received 16 weekly treatments given by three experienced RMB practitioners. MEASURES: Pre- and posttreatment assessments covered demographics, disability, and pain. Clients also completed daily bedtime assessments of pain, fatigue, emotional state, and sense of control during the entire treatment period. RESULTS: All clients reported reductions in pain and/or disability in post- compared to pretreatment. In spite of a high level of day-to-day variability in the daily assessments, there were significant reductions in pain and fatigue, and significant increases in positive emotional state and sense of control across the treatment period. In reaching this end, however, some clients had slow and steady improvements, some improved more rapidly, while others got worse before they got better. CONCLUSIONS: The natural course of healing-with its inevitable fluctuations in symptoms-is part of a process leading to successful treatment outcomes. Rosen Method Bodywork may be especially helpful in developing and accepting both sensory and emotional body awareness changes that facilitate overall improvement.

Interdyad differences in early mother-infant face-to-face communication: real-time dynamics and developmental pathways.

A microgenetic research design with a multiple case study method and a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses was used to investigate interdyad differences in real-time dynamics and developmental change processes in mother-infant face-to-face communication over the first 3 months of life. Weekly observations of 24 mother-infant dyads with analyses performed dyad by dyad showed that most dyads go through 2 qualitatively different developmental phases of early face-to-face communication: After a phase of mutual attentiveness, mutual engagement begins in Weeks 7-8, with infant smiling and cooing bidirectionally linked with maternal mirroring. This gives rise to sequences of positive feedback that, by the 3rd month, dynamically stabilizes into innovative play routines. However, when there is a lack of bidirectional positive feedback between infant and maternal behaviors, and a lack of permeability of the early communicative patterns to incorporate innovations, the development of the mutual engagement phase is compromised. The findings contribute both to theories of relationship change processes and to clinical work with at-risk mother-infant interactions.

Self and other dialogue in infancy: normal versus compromised developmental pathways.

Dialogical Self Theory, co-regulation, and foundational movement analysis are used to present a description of the development of the dialogical self during the first five months of life using observations of two mother-infant dyads. Susan and her mother illustrate normative emergence of the dialogical self. Susan's I-positions emerge through positive interactions with her mother, for example, through body positioning and dialogue in a flexible yield-push pattern. Peter, another infant we observed, and his mother show how the development of the dialogical self may be disrupted or delayed as rigid boundaries are formed between the mother and infant. Peter's tendency to withdraw, coupled with his mother's persistence at diminishing his positions, results in both avoidant and ambiguous monological positions in relation to his mother.

Applying machine learning to infant interaction: the development is in the details.

The face-to-face interactions of infants and their parents are a model system in which critical communicative abilities emerge. We apply machine learning methods to explore the predictability of infant and mother behavior during interaction with an eye to understanding the preconditions of infant intentionality. Overall, developmental changes were most evident when the probability of specific behaviors was examined in specific interactive contexts. Mother's smiled predictably in response to infant smiles, for example, and infant smile initiations become more predictable over developmental time. Analysis of face-to-face interaction--a tractable model system--promise to pave the way for the construction of virtual and physical agents who are able to interact and develop.

A longitudinal investigation of maternal touching across the first 6 months of life: age and context effects.

The types of touch used by 12 mothers with their 1-, 3- and 5.5-month-old infants were examined longitudinally during two different interaction contexts lasting 5 min each. Changes in maternal touching as a function of infants' age and interaction context were revealed.

The interactive development of social smiling.

Infant smiles emerge even in the absence of visual feedback, but their interactive development and intensification appear to be dependent on experiences of visually mediated interaction. Although neonatal smiling has no clear emotional content, social smiling emerges out of attentive engagement with an interactive caregiver. This process illustrates the dynamic systems postulate that real-time interaction is a window on developmental process. On the one hand, specific dimensions of smiling may have qualitatively different psychologically meanings. On the other hand, different features of infant smiling may reflect linked indices of a single dimension of positive emotion that ebbs and flows in time. The resolution of this paradox will likely involve continued attention to the interactive flow of positive emotion communication. This will be facilitated by new methods for measuring smiling and positive emotion in time. Smiling may simultaneously index a desire to interact and the dissipation of arousal associated with that interaction. Infants' capacity to become actively and vigorously caught up in emotionally positive smile-mediated interaction is linked to their ability to regulate that emotion by gazing away from their interactive partners. Ultimately, this attentional control paves the way for infant's tendency to use smiles to initiate early referential communication with a partner. These anticipatory smiles may provide a developmental bridge between early emotionally positive dyadic responsivity and later patterns of social competence.

Alive communication.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretical model, based on a dynamic systems perspective and the metaphor of aliveness in communication. Traditional concepts and methods for the study of communication are relatively static and based on the metaphor of signal and response. These traditional methods lend themselves to relatively simplified measures of frequencies and durations, sequences and co-occurrences: a model of objectified communication. The concept of alive communication focuses on the dynamically changing aspects of communication using three related components: coregulation, ordinary variability, and innovation. Like living organisms, alive communication develops over time as it forms dynamically stable patterns. Aliveness can be applied to communication at any age, in any species, between species, in any form including time-delayed practices using written symbols, and with non-living objects. The model provides a tool for evaluating the "life-likeness" of communication with animate and inanimate objects and robotic devices, and for assessing and treating communicative difficulties--in which aliveness is missing--within and between dyads/families.

Effects of normal and perturbed social play on the duration and amplitude of different types of infant smiles.

Different types of smiling varying in amplitude of lip corner retraction were investigated during 2 mother-infant games--peekaboo and tickle--at 6 and 12 months and during normally occurring and perturbed games. Using Facial Action Coding System (FACS), infant smiles were coded as simple (lip corner retraction only), Duchenne (simple plus cheek raising), play (simple plus jaw drop), and duplay (Duchenne plus jaw drop). In addition, again using FACS, the amplitude of lip corner retraction was coded on a 5-point scale. Rather than a single smile expression that differs only in amplitude, the authors found a complex family of different smile expressions differing in their duration and amplitude as a function of game, setup versus climax of the game, and perturbation. Both type of smiling and amplitude of smiling appear to be controlled independently by the infant in relation to the context. These findings reveal systematic and context-specific nuances in infant smiles in the 2nd half of the first year.

Developmental changes in the relationship between the infant's attention and emotion during early face-to-face communication: the 2-month transition.

Weekly observations documented developmental changes in mother-infant face-to-face communication between birth and 3 months. Developmental trajectories for each dyad of the duration of infant facial expressions showed a change from the dominance of Simple Attention (without other emotion expressions) to active and emotionally positive forms of attention to the mother toward the end of the 2nd month. The results support an overlapping waves model, rather than a stage model, of developmental change. Sequential analysis found developmental changes from cycling between Gaze Elsewhere and Simple Attention to the Mother's Face in the early weeks to a complex sequence of transitions between Concentrated Attention, Smile, and Cooing Expression nested into sequences of positive communication during the 2nd and 3rd months.

Social regulatory effects of infant nondistress vocalization on maternal behavior.

This study investigated the social regulatory function of infant nondistress vocalization in modulating maternal response. Thirteen infants and their mothers were observed weekly in a face-to-face interaction situation from 4 to 24 weeks. After the occurrences and the speech quality of infant nondistress vocalization were identified, maternal contingent responses to these vocalizations were also coded. Each responsive action was further classified by the change processes involved. Results showed that it was the occurrence of infant nondistress vocalization rather than its speech quality that regulated maternal verbal response concurrently and that infant nondistress vocalization was more likely to be synchronized with maternal facial expression and touch than with head movements. Developmentally, significant individual differences were found in the linear growth patterns of overall maternal response and within the individual modalities when responding to speechlike vocalizations.

Stability and transitions in mother-infant face-to-face communication during the first 6 months: a microhistorical approach.

In this study the authors attempted to unravel the relational, dynamical, and historical nature of mother-infant communication during the first 6 months. Thirteen mothers and their infants were videotaped weekly from 4 to 24 weeks during face-to-face interactions. Three distinct patterns of mother-infant communication were identified: symmetrical, asymmetrical, and unilateral. Guided by a dynamic systems perspective, the authors explored the stability of and transitions between these communication patterns. Findings from event history analysis showed that (a) there are regularly recurring dyadic communication patterns in early infancy, (b) these recurring patterns show differential stabilities and likelihoods of transitions, (c) dynamic stability in dyadic communication is shaped not only by individual characteristics (e.g., infant sex and maternal parity) but also by the dyad's communication history, and (d) depending on their recency, communication histories varying in temporal proximity exert differential effects on the self-organization processes of a dyadic system.

Developmental changes in mother-infant face-to-face communication: birth to 3 months.

This study documented the growth of the earliest form of face-to-face communication in 16 mother-infant dyads, videotaped weekly during a naturalistic face-to-face interaction, between 1 and 14 weeks, in 2 conditions: with the infant in the mother's arms and with the infant semi-reclined on a sofa. Results showed a curvilinear development of early face-to-face communication, with a significant increase occurring between Week 4 and Week 9 depending on the dyad. After 2 months, trajectories diverged into 2 groups: I whose duration of face-to-face communication continued to increase and I whose duration peaked and then began to decrease. After the 1st month, the duration of face-to-face communication was significantly longer when the infant was on the sofa rather than in the mother's arms. In the latter condition, during the 3rd month, girls spent a significantly longer time than boys in face-to-face communication. These findings suggest that context (infant being held vs. not being held) interacts with the infant's age and sex in affecting mother-infant communication.

O contexto sociocultural e historico dos estudos do desenvolvimento

Este e um comentario baseado nos artigos deste Numero Especial. Uma leitura desses artigos sugere que eles se unem em torno dos seguintes temas gerais: orientacao relacional (em oposicao a foco em individuos, corporificacao sensual do self (em contraste com concepcao mentalista de self), visao de desenvolvimento como co-construcao historica que e culturalmente mediada, concepcao de relacoes como auto-organizadas e emergentes (mais do que soma de inputs), e foco em pesquisa de processo (em vez de produtos). A psicologia do desenvolvimento brasileira esta situada dentro do contexto da historia cultural local e mundial de estudos evolutivos.