Interpersonal Synchrony: A Survey of Evaluation Methods across Disciplines <s> Functions in Early Infancy <s> Abstract Sound films of social interaction are analysed and some detailed descriptions of the interrelations of the movements of speakers ans listeners are given. These descriptions provide further examples of ‘interactional synchrony’, first described by Condon and Ogston (1966). It is found that the flow of movement in the listener may be rhythmically coordinated with the speech and movements of the speaker. It is also shown how the way in which individuals may be in synchrony with one another can vary, and that these variations are related to their respective roles in the interaction. Some of the implications of the phenomenon of interactional synchrony are discussed. <s> BIB001 </s> Interpersonal Synchrony: A Survey of Evaluation Methods across Disciplines <s> Functions in Early Infancy <s> 1. THE DEVELOPMENT THROUGH LIFE PERSPECTIVE. Assumptions of the Text. A Psychosocial Approach: The Interaction of the Biological, Psychological, and Societal Systems. The Scientific Process. 2. PSYCHOSOCIAL THEORY. What Is a Theory? The PSYCHOSOCIAL Perspective. Basic Concepts of Psychosocial Theory. Evaluation of Psychosocial Theory. The Life Span. Chapter Summary. References. Case Study: Rose. 3. MAJOR THEORIESFOR UNDERSTANDING CHANGE. The Theory of Evolution. Cognitive Development Theory. Theories of Learning. Cultural Theory. Social Role Theory. Systems Theory. Chapter Summary. References. 4. THE PERIOD OF PREGNANCY AND PRENATAL DEVELOPMENT. Genetics and Development. Genetic Sources of Individuality. Genetic Technology and Psychosocial Evolution. Evaluating the Impact of Heredity on Behavior. Normal Fetal Development. The Birth Process. The Mother, the Fetus, and the Psychosocial Environment. Applied topic: Abortion. Summary. References. 5. INFANCY (FIRST 24 MONTHS). Newborns. The Development of Sensory/Perceptual and Motor Functions. Attachment. Sensorimotor Intelligence and Early Causal Schemes. Understanding the Nature of Objects and Creating Categories. Emotional Development. The Psychosocial Crisis: Trust versus Mistrust. The Central Process for Resolving the Crisis: Mutuality with the Caregiver. The Prime Adaptive Ego Quality and the Core Pathology. Applied Topic: The Role of Parents. Chapter Summary. References. 6. TODDLERHOOD (AGES 2 AND 3). Developmental Tasks. The Psychosocial Crisis: Autonomy versus Shame and Doubt. The Central Process: Imitation. The Prime Adaptive Ego Quality and the Core Pathology. The Impact of Poverty on Psychosocial Development in Toddlerhood. Applied Topic: Day Care. Chapter Summary. References. 7. EARLY SCHOOL AGE (4 TO 6 YEARS). Developmental Tasks. The Psychosocial Crisis: Initiative Versus Guilt. The Central Process: Identification. The Prime Adaptive Ego Quality and the Core Pathology. Applied Topic: School Readiness. Chapter Summary. References. 8. MIDDLE CHILDHOOD (6-12 YEARS). Developmental Tasks. The Psychosocial Crisis: Industry versus Inferiority. The Central Process: Education. The Prime Adaptive Ego Quality and the Core Pathology. Applied Topic: Violence in the Lives of Children. Chapter Summary. References. 9. EARLY ADOLESCENCE (12-18 YEARS). Developmental Tasks. The Psychosocial Crisis: Group Identity versus Alienation. The Central Process: Peer Pressure. The Prime Adaptive Ego Quality and the Core Pathology. Applied Topic: Adolescent Alcohol and Drug Use. Chapter Summary. <s> BIB002 </s> Interpersonal Synchrony: A Survey of Evaluation Methods across Disciplines <s> Functions in Early Infancy <s> In the early months of life, infants acquire information about the phonetic properties of their native language simply by listening to adults speak. The acoustic properties of phonetic units in language input to young infants in the United States, Russia, and Sweden were examined. In all three countries, mothers addressing their infants produced acoustically more extreme vowels than they did when addressing adults, resulting in a “stretching” of vowel space. The findings show that language input to infants provides exceptionally well-specified information about the linguistic units that form the building blocks for words. <s> BIB003 </s> Interpersonal Synchrony: A Survey of Evaluation Methods across Disciplines <s> Functions in Early Infancy <s> At the forefront of debates on language are new data demonstrating infants' early acquisition of information about their native language. The data show that infants perceptually “map” critical aspects of ambient language in the first year of life before they can speak. Statistical properties of speech are picked up through exposure to ambient language. Moreover, linguistic experience alters infants' perception of speech, warping perception in the service of language. Infants' strategies are unexpected and unpredicted by historical views. A new theoretical position has emerged, and six postulates of this position are described. <s> BIB004 </s> Interpersonal Synchrony: A Survey of Evaluation Methods across Disciplines <s> Functions in Early Infancy <s> We review research evidence on the emergence and development of active ‘‘self-and-other’’ awareness in infancy, and examine the importance of its motives and emotions to mental health practice with children. This relates to how communication begins and develops in infancy, how it influences the individual subject’s movement, perception, and learning, and how the infant’s biologically grounded self-regulation of internal state and self-conscious purposefulness is sustained through active engagement with sympathetic others. Mutual selfother-consciousness is found to play the lead role in developing a child’s cooperative intelligence for cultural learning and language. A variety of preconceptions have animated rival research traditions investigating infant communication and cognition. We distinguish the concept of ‘‘intersubjectivity’’, and outline the history of its use in developmental research. Thetransforming body and brain of a humanindividual grows inactive engagement with an environment of human factors—organic at first, then psychological or inter-mental. Adaptive, human-responsive processes are generated first by interneuronal activity within the developing brain as formation of the human embryo is regulated in a support-system of maternal tissues. Neural structures are further elaborated with the benefit of intra-uterine stimuli in the foetus, then supported in the rapidly growing forebrain and cerebellum of the young child by experience of the intuitive responses of parents and other human companions. We focus particularly on intrinsic patterns and processes in pre-natal and post-natal brain maturation that anticipate psychosocial support in infancy. The operation of an intrinsic motive formation (IMF) that developed in the core of the brain before birth is evident in the tightly integrated intermodal sensory-motor coordination of a newborn infant’s orienting to stimuli and preferential learning of human signals, by the temporal coherence and intrinsic rhythms of infant behaviour, especially in communication, and neonates’ extraordinary capacities for reactive and evocative imitation. The correct functioning of this integrated neural motivating system is found to be essential to the development of both the infant’s purposeful consciousness and his or her ability to cooperate with other persons’ actions and interests, and to learn from them. The relevance of infants’ inherent intersubjectivity to major child mental health issues is highlighted by examining selected areas of clinical concern. We review recent findings on postnatal depression, prematurity, autism, ADHD, specific language impairments, and central auditory processing deficits, and comment on the ecacy of interventions that aim to support intrinsic motives for intersubjective communication when these are not developing normally. <s> BIB005 </s> Interpersonal Synchrony: A Survey of Evaluation Methods across Disciplines <s> Functions in Early Infancy <s> In this review we examine empirical and theoretical work in three eras—infancy, toddlerhood, and early childhood—and for each era describe the structure of dyadic synchrony in interactions involving children and their caregivers, as well as offer speculation about its developmental function for the child. We review divergent literatures dealing with synchrony-related constructs which, together, suggest that although the structure and function of synchrony change throughout the course of early development, the ability to achieve synchrony may represent a crucial developmental achievement for significant dyadic relationships, one that facilitates social, emotional, and cognitive growth for the child. <s> BIB006 </s> Interpersonal Synchrony: A Survey of Evaluation Methods across Disciplines <s> Functions in Early Infancy <s> Birdsong is considered a model of human speech development at behavioral and neural levels. Few direct tests of the proposed analogs exist, however. Here we test a mechanism of phonological development in human infants that is based on social shaping, a selective learning process first documented in songbirds. By manipulating mothers' reactions to their 8-month-old infants' vocalizations, we demonstrate that phonological features of babbling are sensitive to nonimitative social stimulation. Contingent, but not noncontingent, maternal behavior facilitates more complex and mature vocal behavior. Changes in vocalizations persist after the manipulation. The data show that human infants use social feedback, facilitating immediate transitions in vocal behavior. Social interaction creates rapid shifts to developmentally more advanced sounds. These transitions mirror the normal development of speech, supporting the predictions of the avian social shaping model. These data provide strong support for a parallel in function between vocal precursors of songbirds and infants. Because imitation is usually considered the mechanism for vocal learning in both taxa, the findings introduce social shaping as a general process underlying the development of speech and song. <s> BIB007 </s> Interpersonal Synchrony: A Survey of Evaluation Methods across Disciplines <s> Functions in Early Infancy <s> Associations between experiences and outcomes could be due to (a) continuation of adversity or (b) organismic changes, including experience-expectant and experience-adaptive developmental programming. The adoption into British families of children who had been reared in profoundly depriving institutions in Romania presented an opportunity to test mechanisms. Romanian children reared from infancy in very depriving institutions for periods up to 42 months were compared with 52 nondeprived UK-born children placed into adoptive families before the age of 6 months. The results at 6 years of age showed substantial normal cognitive and social functioning after the provision of family rearing but also major persistent deficits in a substantial minority. The pattern of findings suggests some form of early biological programming or neural damage stemming from institutional deprivation, but the heterogeneity in outcome indicates that the effects are not deterministic. During the 1950s to 1970s, strong claims were made regarding the supposed permanent effects of early adverse experiences and also about the importance of critical periods in development that required particular experiences to occur during a narrow time frame for normal development to proceed (Bowlby, 1951; Klaus & Kennell, 1976; Pilling & Kellmer-Pringle, 1978; World Health Organization Expert Committee on Mental Health, 1951). Both claims failed to be supported by empirical research findings, at least with respect to their strong form (Bateson, 1966; Bornstein, 1987; Rutter, 1981; Sluckin, 1973), and the concepts went out of fashion. It came to be accepted that experiences at all ages could be influential and that the extent to which the effects of adverse experiences did or did not persist depended in large part on whether the early disadvantage or deprivation was followed by later disadvantage or deprivation (Clarke & Clarke, 1976, 2000). During the 1990s, there was a reemergence of these earlier claims in a slightly different form, supposedly supported by neuroscience findings on early brain development and on the ways in which such development is sculpted and shaped by early experiences (see Bruer, 1999, for a critique). In this article, we seek first to clarify the relevant theoretical notions and then to use our data set on children reared in extremely depriving Romanian orphanages, who were subsequently adopted into United Kingdom (UK) families at ages ranging from infancy to 31U2 years and then followed up at the ages of 4 and 6 years (they have recently been reassessed at 11–12 years), in order to test alternative causative models. The sample provided a particularly striking example of a “natural experiment” (see Rutter, Pickles, Murray, & Eaves, 2001) in which there was a sharp discontinuity between early and later rearing environments and in which the change was extremely sudden (and thus easy to time exactly) and also involved an unusually radical shift from a profound and pervasive institutional deprivation to somewhat above-average rearing circumstances in a low-risk family setting. The key question is whether, given the high quality of the later environment, there were any persisting sequelae and, if there were, to what they might be due. <s> BIB008 </s> Interpersonal Synchrony: A Survey of Evaluation Methods across Disciplines <s> Functions in Early Infancy <s> Infants learn language with remarkable speed, but how they do it remains a mystery. New data show that infants use computational strategies to detect the statistical and prosodic patterns in language input, and that this leads to the discovery of phonemes and words. Social interaction with another human being affects speech learning in a way that resembles communicative learning in songbirds. The brain's commitment to the statistical and prosodic patterns that are experienced early in life might help to explain the long-standing puzzle of why infants are better language learners than adults. Successful learning by infants, as well as constraints on that learning, are changing theories of language acquisition. <s> BIB009 </s> Interpersonal Synchrony: A Survey of Evaluation Methods across Disciplines <s> Functions in Early Infancy <s> Background Children of depressed mothers have elevated conduct problems, presumably because maternal depression disrupts the caregiving environment. Alternatively, the association between maternal depression and children’s antisocial behavior (ASB) may come about because (1) depressed women are likely to have comorbid antisocial personality traits, (2) depressed women are likely to mate and bear children with antisocial men, or (3) children of depressed mothers inherit a genetic liability for psychopathology. Method We used data from the E-Risk Study, a representative British cohort of 1116 twin pairs assessed at 5 and 7 years of age. We tested for environmental mediation of the association between maternal depression during the children’s first 5 years of life and children’s ASB at age 7 years, free from familial liability for ASB. Results Maternal depression occurring after, but not before, the twins’ birth was associated with child ASB and showed a significant dose-response relationship with child ASB at 7 years of age. Parental history of ASPD symptoms accounted for approximately one third of the observed association between maternal depression and children’s ASB, but maternal depression continued to significantly predict children’s ASB. Intraindividual change analyses indicated that children exposed to their mother’s depression between ages 5 and 7 years showed a subsequent increase in ASB by age 7 years. The combination of depression and ASPD symptoms in mothers posed the greatest risk for children’s ASB. Conclusions Studies ignoring genetic transmission overestimate social transmission effects because both genetic and environmental processes are involved in creating risk for ASB in children of depressed mothers. Interventions for depressed mothers aiming to reduce conduct problems in their children should address parents’ antisocial personality, as well as mothers’ depression. <s> BIB010 </s> Interpersonal Synchrony: A Survey of Evaluation Methods across Disciplines <s> Functions in Early Infancy <s> As the field of attachment has expanded over the past four decades, the perturbations in the relational context which give rise to disturbances of attachment are increasingly, though by no means conclusively, understood. In Part I, this article reviews the historical and current state of research regarding normative attachment classification, the diagnosis of Reactive Attachment Disorder, and the proposed categories of Secure Base Distortions and Disrupted Attachment Disorder. In Part II, the article explores the role of parental psychopathology and the manner in which disturbed caregiver self-regulation leads to disturbances in the mutual regulation between caregiver and infant. The question of the relationship between particular types of maternal pathology and particular forms of attachment disturbance is examined through recent research on the association between maternal PTSD, Atypical Maternal Behavior, and child scores on the Disturbances of Attachment Interview (DAI). The authors present original research findings to support that the presence and severity of maternal violence-related PTSD were significantly associated with secure base distortion in a community pediatrics sample of 76 mothers and preschool-age children. Clinical implications and recommendations for treatment of attachment disturbances conclude the article. <s> BIB011
There is likely much that is not yet understood regarding the role of synchrony during early development. Some important functions have been highlighted. First, synchrony appears to be involved in the coregulation of affective states  ,  , that is, a "process through which the mother and infant match each other's affective states within lags of seconds jointly moderating the level of positive arousal." Mothers tend to use this mechanism to maintain and regulate exchanges with their infant during face-to-face interaction. Through these synchronized exchanges, the mother can smoothly move the infant from one state to another. In other words, synchrony facilitates the interaction, promotes openness between mother and child, and enhances the degree of presence in a gathering BIB001 , BIB005 ,  . Second, synchrony seems to improve the infant's experience of effectance and social connection BIB006 . From the experience of dyadic synchrony, the infant gains a feeling that the interaction cycles are completed. When the interaction cycles are interrupted and then reestablished, "the infant's sense of confidence in his ability to selfregulate and engage others effectively" is enhanced BIB006 . Newman and Newman describe this mechanism as follows: "Long before infants can use language to convey feelings or needs, they experience the satisfaction of social connections through these cycles of communication. They do not rely on spoken language but on the many emotional cues that arise from rhythmic patterns of breathing, facial expressions, tone of voice, touch, and eye gaze. As the mother and baby move into renewed moments of coordination, their sense of pleasure increases, leaving a memory of such moments to guide future conversations" BIB002 . Third, given what has been said previously, synchrony should facilitate secure attachment. The increasing number of children with insecure attachment and behavioral symptoms after exposure during infancy to a mother with disruptive behaviors BIB011 , depression BIB010 , or social deprivation BIB008 substantiates the importance of synchrony for adequate emotional child development. Fourth, synchrony also plays a role during language acquisition. Empirical evidence for probabilistic or statistical learning has matured in the fields of auditory and visual inputs  . In language acquisition, cultural factors are crucial for both oral and written languages; however, cultural influences on oral and written languages develop in radically different ways. Oral language develops "spontaneously" unless the child is deprived of language exposure. Saffran et al.  and Kuhl et al.  , BIB009 , BIB003 investigated the role of exposition to a given language by highlighting a statistical learning process and specialization in native languages (e.g., the magnet effect) BIB004 . Simple exposure, however, does not explain language learning. In both speech production and perception, the presence of an adult interacting with a child strongly influences learning BIB007 . Finally, imitation, which has been widely studied in developmental psychology, should be mentioned  ,  . Imitation can be defined as a motor or verbal act that is similar to a motor or verbal act previously initiated by a model. At first, imitation is a means to learn by observation and replication (observational learning). Imitation also helps the child construct a social code and replicate what he has observed in adequate situations. Next, imitation is a means to communicate for as long as the child cannot speak. The child learns to communicate at first with various forms of imitation, such as symbolic play, which occurs when the child begins to substitute one object for another and to represent this object in a fictive world (for instance, riding a chair as a horse), or postponed imitation (when the model of imitation is absent). Until approximately two years of age, the child does not speak and resorts to imitation to interact with his peers. Imitation tends to disappear with the acquisition of language.