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Communication
Sciences
Joseph Jaffe, M.D., Chief
of Psychiatric Research
During the year 2000, our laboratory underwent renovations, including the design and construction of an observation room according to specifications that satisfy the requirements for recording infant social interactions, including the Ainsworth Strange Situation Test (of infant attachment). In addition, new computers and video equipment were purchased, although installation and activation of this equipment has been delayed due to difficulties associated with the Kolb building renovations. As part of this general "retreading," a fortunate referral from Dr. Pardes brought us Imran Khan, M.D. from Pakistan as a post-doctoral volunteer for the Spring semester, prior to the beginning of his psychiatric residency. Dr. Khan, an expert in data management on the Internet, consulted on the reprogramming of our 30-year-old automated system for coding dialogic rhythms and on the the updating of our lab equipment. He provided our department with its own website and advanced our plan to become a specialized shared-equipment facility at the Medical Center.
Rhythms of Dialogue in Infancy: Coordinated Interpersonal Timing in Development (J. Jaffe, B. Beebe, S. Feldstein, C. Crown & M. Jasnow) Summarizing a 15-year project, this monograph of the Society for Research in Child Development is in press. Although theories of early social development emphasize the advantage of mother-infant rhythmic coupling and bidirectional coordination, empirical demonstrations of this assertion have curiously remained sparse. To fill this gap, we tested the hypothesis that 12-month attachment and cognition is predictable from 4-month vocal rhythm coordination. Partner and site novelty were studied by recording mother-infant, stranger-infant, and mother-stranger face-to-face interactions in both home and laboratory sites, for 88 4-month-old infants, a total of 410 recordings. An automated dialogic coding scheme, appropriate to the non-periodic rhythms of our data, implemented a systems concept of every action as jointly produced by both partners. Adult-infant coordination at four months indeed predicted both 12-month outcomes, but midrange degree of mother-infant and stranger-infant coordination was optimal for attachment (Strange Situation), whereas high ("tight") stranger-infant coordination in the lab was optimal for cognition (Bayley Scales). Thus, a high degree of coordination can index optimal or suboptimal outcomes, as a function of the outcome measure, partner, and site. "More" is not necessarily "better." Bidirectional coordination patterns were salient in both attachment and cognition predictions. Comparison of mother-infant and stranger-infant interactions was particularly informative, suggesting the dynamics of infants' early differentiation from mothers. Stranger with infant dyads showed different patterns of vocal rhythm activity level, were more bidirectional, accounted for eight times more variance in Bayley scores, predicted attachment just as well as mother with infant, and revealed more varied contingency structures and a wider range of attachment outcomes. To explain why our 4-month vocal timing measures successfully predicted 12-month outcomes, our underlying dialogue model was construed as containing procedures for regulating the pragmatics of "proto-conversation." The 4-month timing patterns were seen as "procedural" or "performance" knowledge, and as precursors of various kinesic patterns in the 12-month outcomes. Thus, our work further defines a fundamental dyadic timing matrix, a system which guides the trajectory of relatedness, informing all relational theories of development.
"Mirror Neuron" Theory (S.W. Anderson) A new interpretation of the department's conversational research, including mother-infant interactions, is based on the recent discovery of a new type of neuron in the premotor cortex. Dubbed "mirror neurons" by their discoverers at the University of Parma, Italy, they have now been found to be distributed across the entire motor homunculus. Until recently, the homunculus was thought to be simply a motor control region, but new MRI studies show that these neurons respond to the observation of specific goal-directed movements of mouth, hand, or foot when they are performed by another person, and in the absence of matching overt motor activity performed by the subject. Evidence is now being sought to confirm the prediction that there are mirror neurons in Broca's motor speech area that respond when speech is perceived, supporting a well-known motor theory of language itself.
For decades, researchers have assumed that conversational entrainment between partners engaged in dialogue is accomplished by sequential constraints in a time series, where signals of speaking and pausing at time t constrain behaviors occurring later, at time t + 1. Anderson has developed dozens of Markov models, based on varying numbers of constraining states sampled at various rates, only to find that even mothers and babies "chime in" on each other in ways the Markov models cannot explain. He presented the problem posed for our independent- decision models in Paris (1994) since simultaneous cooperation was occurring within seconds (or even shorter periods) much too often according to our predictions. There was no explanation at the time.
If there are mirror neurons that track social interactions, including speech as well as gesture, then it is possible that simultaneous mirroring of one's observations and actions could result in time-locking of simultaneously perceived and performed events, alternating smoothly between partners without error. A paper by Anderson, Koulomzin, Beebe, and Jaffe, entitled "Visual attention and self-grooming behaviors among 4-month-old infants: Indirect evidence pointing to a developmental role for mirror neurons," was presented at the Hanse Institute Conference on Mirror Neurons and the Evolution of Brain and Language, Delmenhorst, Germany July 5-8, 2000.
Mother-Infant Regulation: Depressive Symptoms and Attachment (B. Beebe, J. Jaffe, S. Anderson, S. Feldstein) The first full year of this NIMH-funded project coincided with the International Conference on Infant Studies in Brighton, England. Our department was well-represented by five posters. The details of all these projects were described in the 1999 annual report. The titles of this millenium presentation were:
Hentel, A., Beebe, B., & Jaffe, J., Maternal depression at 6 weeks is associated with infant self-comfort at 4 months.
Kaminer, T., Beebe, B., Jaffe, J., Kelly, K., & Marquette, L., Maternal depression, maternal speech, and infant gaze at 4 months.
Marquettte, L., Beebe, B., & Jaffe, J., Maternal self-report depression and infant and mother behavioral profiles.
Putterman, J., Beebe, B., Jaffe, J., Wolitsky, D., Ruffins, S., Goodman, P., Hager-Budny, M., Marquette, L., & Helbraun, L., Maternal depression, maternal object relations, and mother-infant gaze predict infant attachment.
Stepakoff, S., Beebe, B., Jaffe, J., Mother-infant tactile communication at four months: Infant gender, maternal ethnicity, and maternal depression.
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