Mother-Infant Communication

Mother-Infant Communication
Dynamic systems theory entails a new approach to the development of social relationship, in fact principles of non-linear dynamics, self organization and complexity may be used in a quantitative way and applied to various domains, like work on mother infant relationships, emotion development and motor and cognitive development.

In the study of child abuse it is easy to consider determinism and indeterminism an unanswered question, for example in the transmission of intergenerational abuse: nonlinearities in the dynamic systems model are responsible also for different kinds of relationships between antecedents and consequents.

If the development is to enable creativity and emergence of novelty, there remains a level of unpredictability from current conditions to future conditions, as well as the capacity to make predictions from the current conditions about the likehood of future conditions in the promotion of smoother interactions.

Determinism and indeterminism, acting together in social processes, lead to the development of relationships and communication.

Dynamic systems theory put on emphasis on the importance and the utility of the concept of frame as coregulated nonverbal communication and a prerequisite of human infants and also nonhuman species.

C0regulation emerges form in verbal and preverbal communication in both human and nonhuman species; it can be distingusked from simple synchrony, matching or attunement because it is defined by the same patterns of emergent novelty and mutual creativity that have been recognized in dialogical and narrative approaches to interpersonal communication.

Examples are the use of postural coorientation, kissing, courtship behavior, breaking and establishing mutual gaze, game playing and fighting. Infants and young children are capable of entering into these forms of creative nonverbal communication.

Through coregulated dialogical processes stable patterns called frames emerge as rituals, plots or routines, regularities in the social process to which participants return , keeping the same overall pattern of coactions against a background of variability. Examples of frames include parent-infant gamest, peer play rituals, unresolved disagreements and role relationships.
Mother-Infant Communication