Early Adult-Infant Interaction: Expectable Sequences of Behavior

Abstract

During face-to-face interactions adults were found to be more responsive to changes in the behavior of 2-month-old infants than the infants were to adult behavior. The findings also suggest that infants were sensitive to over-stimulation: they were more likely to begin and to end smiling and gazing when the adult was relatively nonexpressive. The results further suggest that adults may use temporal expectancies, in addition to changes in infant behavior, as cues to modify their own behavior. Variability in temporal expectancies may help to explain why some adults learn to reduce their level of stimulation when the infant is nonresponsive, while others do not.