Research on the acquisition of Mayan languages has shown child-directed communication (CDC) to be low in frequency. Nevertheless, long-term linguistic-anthropological research with the Tsotsil Mayan in Southern Mexico has documented episodes in family life when children engage in interactional routines or interactional formats (IFs) with their…

Children all over the world learn language, yet the contexts in which they do so vary substantially. This variation needs to be systematically quantified to build robust and generalizable theories of language acquisition. We compared communicative interactions between parents and their 2-year-old children (N = 99 families) during mealtime across…

Principles of a dynamic, dyadic systems view of mother-infant face-to-face communication, which considers self- and interactive processes in relation to one another, were tested. The process of interaction across time in a large low-risk community sample at infant age 4 months was examined. Split-screen videotape was coded on a 1-s time base for…

Evaluates the extent to which mutual regulation occurs in mother-infant interactions by assessing the relationship of their affective and attentional involvement. (MH)

The impact of two levels of infant organization and marital satisfaction on parent-infant interaction patterns was investigated in 25 couples. It was predicted that (1) disorganized infants would have a negative impact on the parent-infant relationship, and that (2) parent-infant interaction with disorganized infants would be more negative among…

This study compared efforts of 20 deaf and 20 hearing infants to reengage their deaf or hearing mothers in a maternal "still-face" situation. When all kinds of infant signal behaviors were considered, few overall differences were found in eliciting efforts by deaf and hearing infants. (Author/DB)

The relationship between aspects of mother-infant interactional behavior (vocalization, smiles, mutual eye contact, and facing position) and the infant's developmental level was investigated through both observation and intervention efforts. A sample of 33 primiparous mothers (mean CA of 22 years) from low income families and their infants (mean…

A number of infantile nonverbal behaviors are listed that can be interpreted as signs of a child's fundamental psychosocial orientations to others during the first year. Ethological studies of child and adult nonverbal communication suggest a considerable degree of neoteny in the human sign system. (SW)

This study attempts to investigate the effects of increased maternal visual regard on neonatal social visual behavior and upon patterns of mother-neonate interaction within the context of a learning theory paradigm. Subjects were 3-day-old neonates and their mothers; with 10 of the 15 mother-neonate pairs as the experimental group, and 5 as the…

In this study of maternal interpretations of infant behaviors, seven mothers of infants with Down syndrome identified 18 of 22 subcategories of potentially meaningful infant behavior previously identified by mothers of typically developing infants. These seven mothers also identified an additional category: developmental status-abilities.…

This study was designed to examine the nature of nonverbal social interaction between mothers and infants and to compare various situational effects. A total of ten 3-month-old twin infants (five male and five female) and their mothers were videotaped in their homes during free play, bottle feeding and spoon feeding situations. A repeated measures…

This study investigated the communicative behavior of five high-level and five low-level autistic children (ages 3-5 years). Differential responses of parents and a clinician to the children's protesting, responses, and initiations were assessed. Findings indicate differential interaction behavior and behavior problems of autistic children with…

This longitudinal study of the development of nonverbal behavior in the first 3 years of a child's life focuses on four factors: the relation between physical and vocal interaction between the child and his mother, observed cuses which can be used to interpret the child's communicative intent at different age levels, frequency of occurrence and…

Research supported in part by U.S.P.H.S. General Research Support grant 1-501-FR-5432-04, Graduate Psychiatry Training grant 3-TI-MH 5557-17-81; and by Children's Bureau Handicapped Child Research grant 11-4637.

The relationship between the encoder and the decoder in the communication of nonverbal behavior provides the basis for the two studies described in this report. The first study investigated the ability of parents to decode the nonverbal behavior of their own and other children. Parents were asked to identify children's mode of encoding (natural or…