Mother-Infant Behaviors at 6 and 9 Months: A Microanalytic View

This chapter examines the face-to-face interactions of mothers and infants. It reports results from a large number of analyses completed for 6- and 9-month-old infants during face-to-face interactions with their mothers. Interactive behaviors of both members of the dyads are described, including tactile, visual, and auditory modalities or sensory channels. It shows that during face-to-face interaction, deaf mothers incorporate more varied forms of stimulation and in different modalities than do hearing mothers, particularly when interacting with a 6-month-old infant. These activities include smiling, highly animated facial expressions, visual-gestural games and sign communication, and frequent, energetic tactile stimulation. However, this pattern changed somewhat at 9 months, at which point both groups of hearing mothers increased smiling, and group differences in frequency of behaviors decreased.