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A perturbation paradigm was employed to assess 3- and 6-month-old infants' and their mothers' sensitivity to a 3-s temporal delay implemented in an ongoing televised interaction. At both ages, the temporal delay affected infant but not maternal behavior and only when implementing the temporal delay in maternal (Experiment 1, N = 64) but not infant (Experiment 2, N = 60) behavior. In addition, the experimental manipulation influenced promptness of maternal smiling responses reliably more than promptness of infant smiling responses. The findings suggest that the timing of maternal behavior plays an important role in infants' perception of maternal responsiveness, whereas mothers seem to monitor general aspects of infant behavior such as overall level of engagement.

The role of maternal affect mirroring on the development of prosocial behaviors and social expectancies was assessed in forty-one 2- to 3-month-old infants. Prosocial behavior was characterized as infants' positive behavior and increased attention toward their mothers. Social expectancies were defined as infants' expectancy for affective sharing. Mothers and infants were observed twice, approximately 1 week apart. During Visit 1, mothers and infants were videotaped while interacting over television monitors for 3 min. During Visit 2, infants engaged in a live, 3-min interaction with their mothers over television monitors (live condition) and they also viewed a replay of their mothers' interaction from the preceding week (replay condition). The order of conditions was counterbalanced. Maternal affect mirroring was measured according to the level of attention maintenance, warm sensitivity, and social responsiveness displayed. A natural split was observed with 58% of the mothers ranking high and 42% ranking low on these affect mirroring measures (HAM and LAM, respectively). Infants in the HAM group ranked high on prosocial behaviors and social expectancy-they discriminated between live and replay, conditions with smiles, vocalizations, and gazes. Infants in the LAM group ranked low on these variables-they gazed longer during the live condition than during the replay condition, but only when the live condition was presented first; however, they did not smile or vocalize more. These findings indicate that there is a relation between affect mirroring and social expectancies in infants.

Several theoretical conceptions emphasize the importance of prompt responses to infant's signals in providing them with early causal experiences. The present paper examines if a maternal tendency toward prompt responses can be identified by distributional analyses of maternal response latencies and if this response tendency can be shown for different communicative channels (in verbal/vocal, nonverbal, intermodal communication). In addition, the paper focuses on the relation between the temporal contingency of maternal behavior and measures of maternal interactional quality. Interactional sequences of 54 mother and 3-month-old infant dyads were analyzed using microanalytical assessment techniques and ratings of interactional quality. Distributional analyses of maternal expressions during face-to-face encounters revealed that promptness of responses toward infant signals with a short latency is a typical response tendency in maternal behavior. There are, however, individual differences between mothers, indicating that this response tendency is expressed in different communicative channels by individual mothers. This is shown by low correlations between the contingency indices of different communicative channels. The relation between contingency and rated indicators of interactional quality turned out to be rather small, indicating that maternal contingency may be conceptualized to contribute an independent factor to the quality of maternal interactional behavior.

This study sought to replicate previous work in testing the hypothesis that interactions of dyads developing secure attachment relationships would be characterized by disproportionately synchronous and those of dyads developing insecure relationships by disproportionately asynchronous exchanges. Additionally, a priori hypotheses were tested regarding expected differences in the interactional histories of dyads developing insecure-avoidant and insecure-resistant attachments. Results supported the study's predictions in all cases. Dyads developing secure attachments were observed at 3 and 9 months to interact in a disproportionately well-timed, reciprocal, and mutually rewarding manner; dyads developing insecure relationships were disproportionately characterized by interactions in which mothers were minimally involved, unresponsive to infant signals, or intrusive. Within the insecure group, as predicted, 3- and 9-month interactions of avoidant dyads were characterized by maternal intrusiveness and overstimulation; resistant dyads were characterized at both ages by poorly coordinated interactions in which mothers were underinvolved and inconsistent. These findings are discussed as they lend to a growing body of evidence concerning associations between differential interactional histories and attachment quality.

The study examines an intervention designed to influence mothers' sensitive responsiveness toward their infant by presenting information about the newborn's competence to interact and promoting affectionate handling and interaction with the infant. Thirty-six primiparous mothers and their newborn infants participated in the study. On day 2/3 after delivery, mother-infant dyads were assigned to either: (1) an experimental group that received an intervention program designed to enhance mother-infant interaction; or (2) a control group that was presented with an intervention that emphasized basic caregiving skills. One month later an observation was undertaken in the home to assess mother-infant synchronous and asynchronous co-occurrences during free-play and infant bathing. The enhancement group showed a reliably greater frequency of co-occurrences involving vocal exchanges, looking to the partner, and physical contact. There also were differences in mothers' responsiveness to infant crying and involuntary responses. The findings show that even a modest videotaped early intervention can enhance mothers' sensitive responsiveness to the infant.

AbstractBehavioural, pharmacological, and physiological evidence supports an association between displacement activities and anxiety in macaques. Information is scarce in other primate and non-primate species. This study contributes to the understanding of the relation between displacement activities and emotional states by investigating the correspondence between self-directed behaviour and an inherently stressful situation in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). Data were collected on 81 captive chimpanzees housed in conditions varying from indoor single caging to indoor/outdoor enclosures containing up to 14 individuals. Observation of gentle and rough scratching, self-grooming, and yawning were used to test predictions concerning the response of individuals to neighbour vocalisation (i.e. the calls and noisy displays produced by neighbouring groups of chimpanzees), which has been previously demonstrated to increase the likelihood of intragroup agonistic behaviour. In socially-housed chimpanzees rough and gentle scratching and yawning were significantly more common after neighbouring individuals vocalised or displayed than before, but the effect lasted longer for rough-scratching. In addition, during periods characterised by higher levels of neighbour vocalisation, socially-housed chimpanzees performed rough scratching at higher rates. Self-grooming was not affected by the level of neighbour vocalisation. Single-caged chimpanzees, for whom neighbour vocalisation carries no risk of aggression by group members, showed no increase in self-directed behaviour when neighbour vocalisation level was high, suggesting that the risk of intra-group aggression, rather than neighbour vocalisation itself, elicits anxiety. While our study suggests that rough scratching is the most reliable indicator of anxiety in chimpanzees in the context of neighbour vocalisation, it also provides evidence that gentle scratching and yawning can be considered displacement activities in this species.

48 12-month-old infants and their mothers were videotaped in the Ainsworth Strange Situation. Each infant-mother dyad was also filmed for 3 min while the mother completed a questionnaire and the infant was left to explore the room devoid of toys, a situation in which maternal compliance with the request to complete the questionnaire was expected to compete with attentional demands made on her by the infant. Infant-mother attachment was classified as secure, anxious-avoidant, or anxious-resistant on the basis of behavior in the Strange Situation. Assessment of maternal sensitivity during the questionnaire situation included behaviors classified as reflecting appropriate, insufficient, and intrusive responses to infant cues. 3 summary measures of maternal sensitivity, each of which distinguished between mothers of securely and anxiously attached infants in 1-way analysis of variance tests, were entered into a discriminant function analysis. Using the discriminant function coefficients for combining the maternal sensitivity scores, 94% of the infants were correctly classified as securely or anxiously attached on the basis of their mothers' behavior in the questionnaire situation.

Microanalytic procedures were used to explore maternal and infant behaviors, behavioral coordination, maternal response, and nonresponse in relation to security of attachment. Two samples, one of recent immigrants from Central America (n = 39) and the other of mothers and infants from middle-class Euro-American backgrounds (n = 40) were videotaped when the infants were ages 4, 8, and 12 months. Individual differences on measures of maternal response and nonresponse were stable over time and strongly related to the security of attachment, as were some measures of infant behavior and behavioral coordination. The maternal response measures reflected similar associations between maternal behavior and attachment security in the two groups. The results are consistent with other findings showing that mothers of insecure infants are most involved with their infants in such contexts.

The purpose of the present study is to describe the rich variety of vocal behaviours of preschool children, how I see these vocalizations mutate in relation to the children's linguistic and musical development, and the contexts in which these developments take place. Speech and singing responses were collected from eight children during child-adult interactions and in play settings. Each child was visited every four to six months over a 42-month period. The recorded vocal responses of the children were subsequently analyzed by three qualified judges. Most of the children's vocalizations were in accord with adult conceptions of song and speech. Acoustic intermediate vocalizations were found more frequently in young children who are at the initial stage of acquiring vocal control. In older children who had already made clear distinctions between their singing and speaking, they might sometimes purposefully alternate between singing and speaking to communicate in novel forms of contextual intermediate vocalizations. The intermediate vocalizations observed offer a rich account of the linguistic and musical development of children. However, the \"fuzzy\" boundary between preschool children's song and speech brings out the question as to what constitutes a conception of singing and speaking both acoustically and contextually.