Communication in Mother-Infant Interaction

Abstract

Observations of mother-infant dyads yield a host of impressions, both to the eyes of the naive, casual observer and to the scrutiny of the trained student of interpersonal interactions. Familiar reactions of a mother relating to her infant range from viewing the mother as warm and sensitive, the infant as wide-eyed and alert, and the dyad as exhibiting rapport to the other extreme, at which the mother is regarded as rejecting and obtuse, the infant as unresponsive and difficult, and the dyad as uncommunicative and disconnected. Observations of this sort are often stated with a deep sense of conviction and immutable certainty. The generally held agreement as to what the state of affairs is between a mother and infant, based on certain prototypical qualities of the interaction, suggests some level of consensual validation as to what constitute positive or negative attributes in a mother-infant interaction. Certainly, artists for centuries have found mothers engaging in positive types of contact with their infants to be a favorite subject matter, and there seems to be good reason to believe that viewers of these works of art concur with what the respective artists were attempting to depict.