Mother-Infant Face-to-Face Interaction: The Sequence of Dyadic States at 3, 6, and 9 Months

Three untested hypotheses are central to the theory of Brazelton and colleagues about the sequential structure of mother-infant face-to-face interaction: (1) Interactions begin with the mother's positively eliciting her infant's attention; (2) maternal positive expression precedes the onset of infant's positive expression; and (3) when the infant becomes positive, the mother will remain positive until the infant again becomes disengaged. The present report tests these and related hypotheses with data from 54 mother-infant pairs—18 each at 3, 6, and 9 months of age. Mother-infant pairs were videotaped in a face-to-face paradigm for 2 min. Mother and infant behavior was coded with behavioral descriptors and a 0.25-s time-base. Log-linear modeling and related techniques were used to analyze the transitions among mother-infant dyadic states. We found support at 6 and 9 months but not at 3 months for Hypothesis 1, that periods of engagement originate with the mother's using positive affective expressions to try to elicit her disengaged infant. We found strong support at each age for Hypotheses 2 and 3, with one exception: At 9 months, there was a significant probability of the infant's becoming positive before the mother. The results suggest that with some revisions the hypotheses that were tested describe the structure of mother-infant face-to-face interaction from 3 to 9 months of age.