The development of timing

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The development of timing

• Daniel Messinger, Marygrace Yale, Alan
  Cobo-Lewis, Alan Fogel, Meg Venezia, Susan
  Acosta, Danielle Thorp, Peter Mundy, Tricia
  Cassel
• Supported by NICHD 38336 41619 The Positive
  Psychology Foundation

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Timing of expressive actions

• Window into real-time experience and interaction
• Emotion expression central to infant
  communication
• Developmental roots of emotion regulation
• Beginning of referential communication

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Timing early expressive behaviors

• How do infants coordinate expressive actions in
  time and how does this change with age? What is
  an event-based approach? Which pairs of infant
  expressive behaviors are coordinated in time
  (facial expressions and vocalizations, facial
  expressions and gazes at a parents face, and/or
  vocalizations and gazes) and what does this
  suggest for the role of facial expressions?
  Indicate two patterns in which infant gazes and
  smiles are coordinated with mother smiles? How do
  all these patterns  change with age? What does
  this suggest about infant-mother interaction?

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Face-to-face/still-face

• Promise of assessing infant communicative
  intentionality
• Relatively little focus on individual infants
• And their sequences of communicative behaviors
• Either in the still-face or regular face-to-face

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Intentional Bid?
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Overall research goal

• Assessing intentionality by directly coding early
  infant communicative bids has proved difficult
• Communicative coordination may provide a window
  on the interactive development of intentionality

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Events as unit of analysis
Overlapping behaviors create an expressive signal
dependent on how they are patterned in time
Beyond duration of co-occurrence
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Generic Observed Patterns

• A BEFORE B. E.g., Smile before Gaze
• A smile which begins before and ends within a
  gaze at parents face.
• A IN B. E.g., Smile in Gaze
• A smile which begins and ends within a gaze at
  parents face.
• B BEFORE A. E.g., Gaze before Smile
• A gaze at parent which begins before and ends
  within a smile.
• B IN A. E.g., Gaze in Smile
• A gaze at parents face which begins and ends
  within a smile.

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Simulation Procedure
Take Observed Pattern
Expressions
Smile in Gaze
Gazes
Separate into Observed Behaviors
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Use observed behaviors to create simulated
sequences
Observed Behaviors
Gazes Away
Gazes at Mom
No Smiles
Smiles
To Create Simulated Pattern
Smile
Gaze
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Simulation indicates patterns not due to chance
Observed Pattern
Smile in Gaze!
Gaze
Repeat 2000 times.
Z (Observed Simulated)/SDS
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Study 1 Early infant communication

• Facial expressions (smiles frowns)
• Vocalizations (non-reflexive vocalizations)
• Gaze direction (gazing at parents face other)
• 40 infants at 3- 6-months of age in modified
  face-to-face/still-face

• Yale, Messinger, Cobo-Lewis, et al. (1999 in
  press, Developmental Psychology)
• 12 40 infants at 3- 6-months of age in
  modified face-to-face/still-face

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Facial expression vocalization
Facial Expression

• Facial expressions encompass vocalizations in a
  pattern that does not change with age or
  expression - replicated

Vocalization
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Facial expressions and gaze

• Facial expressions especially smiles - begin
  during gazes at parents face
• Stronger with age smile

Facial Expression
Gaze
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Vocalization Gaze

• Vocalizations and gazes at parent were not
  coordinated in time

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Centrality of facial expressions

• Facial expressions - both smiles and frowns -
  begin during gazes at parents face
• Facial expressions encompass vocalizations
• Vocalizations and gazes at parent were not
  coordinated in time

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Dynamic formation of patterns

• Communicative package is not pre-formed, but
  emerges through two links
• Gaze at parents face sets the stage
• for a facial expression
• into which a vocalization is likely to be inserted

Communicative signal dynamically assembles in
real-time
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Development of timing?Smile in gaze ? Smile
after gaze
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Study 2. Interaction developmental process

• 13 mothers and infants
• Interacting weekly in first 6 months of life
• Data summed monthly
• Infant gazes at mothers face
• Infant smiles
• Mother smiles
• Analyses relating infant and mother smiles are
  preliminary

• Messinger, et al.
• (in prep.)

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Infant gaze ? Infant smile ? Stops gaze ? Stops
smile
Smile after gaze
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Emotion regulation development

• Continuous visual contact scaffolds positive
  affect between 1 - 3 months as infants embed
  smiles in gazes at parent.
• Infants gaze away from parent while smiling
  between 4 - 6 months, perhaps in the service of
  emotion regulation - replicated

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Infant smile ? Mother smile ? Infant stops ?
Mother stops
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More emotion regulation development in real-time

• Between 4 6 months, infant smile elicits mother
  smile and infant stops smiling, perhaps also in
  the service of emotion regulation
• Video

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Emotion regulation development

• Infant and mother create moments of mutual
  positive affect
• Infants show increasingly strong positive affect
  in this period
• Infants increasingly manage their own responses
  by briefly disengaging from these encounters

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Video example
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Development of coordination

• When infants gaze away from mother while smiling,
  it creates a potential bridge to focus on another
  object . . .
• Alternating gaze between an object and social
  partner defines joint attention which develops
  between 8 12 months and often involves smiling
• Timing Anticipatory Smiles involve sharing
  positive affect with a partner during joint
  attention

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Early smile before gaze less than expected by
chance
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Study 3. Roots of affective sharing

• 26 typically developing infants
• Administered the Early Social-Communication
  Scales at 8, 10 and 12 months of age
• During episodes of joint attention (JA)
• alternating gaze between object and experimenter
• Proportion of JA episodes involving smiles
• Proportion of Anticipatory Smiles
• Smiles at an object followed by smiling gaze at
  the experimenter
• Conventional analyses

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Anticipatory smile
Gaze at object ? Smile
? Gaze at experimenter
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Anticipatory smile
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Only anticipatory smiling rises
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Communicative milestone

• Anticipatory smiling, not smiling in general,
  became a more likely feature of joint attention
• When infants gaze at an object, smile, and then
  gaze at their social partners, it suggests the
  infants are intentionally sharing something
  specific - positive emotion about an object
  with another.

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Development of timing

• A variety of methods can help us understand
• The lived or real-time experiences of
• Infants communicating
• Infants and parents interacting
• Infants and experimenters interacting
• Revealing the central role of emotional facial
  expressions, the roots of emotion regulation, and
  the development of affective sharing.

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Three interactive links

• Infant gaze ? Infant smile ? Infant stop gaze ?
  Infant stop smile
• Increase with age
• Infant smile ? Mother smile ? Infant stops ?
  Mother stops
• Increase with age
• Infant gaze at mother ? Mother smile ? Infant
  gaze away ? Mother stops smile
• No increase with age

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Centrality of emotional expressions