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INFANTS' AFFECTIVE DISPLAYS WITH MOTHERS AND PEERS Roger Bakeman & Lauren B. Adamson

In the work reported here, we sought to document what happens to infants' displays of positive affect as their communication system develops from the

I predominantly "expressive" face-to-face exchanges of early infancy to the prel inguist ic "referential" dialogues of late infancy. Two cohorts of 14 infants each were videotaped in their homes, one at 6, 9, 12, and 15 and one at 9, 12, 15, and 18 months of age, while playing with mothers, with same-aged peers, and alone. Trained observers identif ied affective dis- plays, by which we mean any sudden increase in the intensity or change in the "hedonic tone" of an infant's actions. They also identif ied times when infants were engaged just with people and times when iinfants and their partners were jo in t l y engaged with the same object. Such jo in t engagement interests us because of its potential for referential communi- cation.

Positive affective displays occurred every 27 !seconds, on the average, during person engagement (no difference between mothers and peers), every 37 sec- onds during jo in t engagement with mothers, and every 192 seconds otherwise. Infants were jo in t l y engaged with mothers 28% of the time yet those times account- ed for 42% of the affective displays. Other~times when affect was especially l i ke ly included the f i r s t 5 seconds of jo int engagement with both mothers and peers and times when mothers acted on objects in repetit ive ways. We think these results are consis- tent with Bruner's notion of a "Scaffolding" role for mothers and with the theorizing of Werner and Kaplan,.who suggest that genetically ear l ier means of communication (such as affective displays) w i l l be used to support the emergence of new communicative functions (such as shared reference to objects).