Interactional Synchrony

Interactional synchrony refers to the coordinated timing and dynamics between a caregiver’s and an infant’s social behaviors during interpersonal exchanges. This synchrony is a dance of sorts relying on the caregiver’s sensitive responsiveness to the child’s cues.

Interactional synchrony is a form of rhythmic interaction between infant and caregiver involving mutual focus, reciprocity, and mirroring of emotion or behavior. Infants coordinate their actions with caregivers in a kind of conversation.

From birth, babies move in a rhythm when interacting with an adult, almost as if they were taking turns. The infant and caregiver are able to anticipate how each other will behave and can elicit a particular response from the other.

For example, a caregiver who laughs in response to their infant’s giggling sound and tickles them is experiencing synchronized interaction.

Interactional synchrony is most likely to develop if the caregiver attends fully to the baby’s state, provides playful stimulation when the infant is alert and attentive, and avoids pushing things when an overexcited or tired infant is fussy and sending the message “Cool it. I just need a break from all this excitement”.

Characteristics of a synchronous parent-child relationship include:

Behavioral Synchrony

• Matched affect and touch: Partners show contingent and responsive matching of positive facial expressions, emotions, gazes, and affectionate behaviors like hugging or kissing.
• Vocal synchrony: Partners coordinate vocal exchanges with rhythmic, synchronous conversations and vocalizations. The parent and infant have a conversation-like exchange of vocalizations and gestures where there is reciprocal turn-taking and affect matching. For example, the parent may smile, coo or touch the baby gently, eliciting babbles, smiles, and limb movements in return.
• Joint engagement: The parent and infant remain actively focused on and involved with each other for extended lengths of time known as “coordinated joint engagement”. For example, they may gaze into one another’s eyes, play interactive games like peek-a-boo, or share attention on toys.

Physiological Synchrony

Physiological synchrony refers to the coupling or coordination of biological processes between the caregiver and infant. Biological synchrony may facilitate behavioral abilities like appropriately timed conversational turn-taking (McFarland, 2001).

When attachment relationships are strong, researchers observe synchronous patterns in things like:

• Heart rate rhythms – When mothers and infants interact, their heart rates speed up and slow down together in coordinated rhythms over time. This physiological linkage supports bonding.
• Hormonal activity – Levels of hormones like oxytocin and cortisol rise and fall together. For example, oxytocin levels may increase at matched times during affectionate contact.
• Brain activity – Brain imaging shows synchronized activity patterns in areas related to empathy, emotion processing, or understanding others when mothers interact with infants.

Implications

By coordinating behavior, physiology, and communication signals with caregivers in a predictable “dance,” infants are guided in establishing foundations for social communication, emotion regulation, and language.

Specifically, research suggests interactional synchrony facilitates language development in areas such as:

• Vocalization – Synchrony provides contingent parental responses to infant vocalizations, reinforcing communicative intent and encouraging further vocal attempts (Bloom et al., 1987; Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2001).
• Turn-taking – The rhythmic coordination of gazes, affect, and vocal patterns during synchrony may scaffold infants’ ability to engage in early conversational exchanges (Bateson, 1975; Bloom, 1998).
• Joint attention – Synchrony helps focus infant attention on the same object or event as the parent, building skills in shared reference critical for language (Carpenter et al., 1998; Tomasello, 1988).
• Emotion regulation – The matching of positive affect and arousal levels during synchrony supports infants’ developing ability to effectively communicate needs and feelings (Feldman, 2015; Jaffe et al., 2001).

Breakdowns in synchrony from conditions like maternal depression or stress can disrupt this process (Reck et al., 2004).

Evidence

• Meltzoff and Moore (1977) found that 2-3 week old infants could imitate specific facial expressions and hand gestures made by an adult model. This ruled out that imitation is learned.
  
  The adult model demonstrated facial expressions or sequenced finger movements. Researchers initially blocked infants from responding by placing pacifiers in their mouths during the display. They then removed the pacifiers and filmed the infants’ reactions, finding the infants produced matching expressions and hand gestures in response.
• Piaget (1962) believed infants under 1 year just displayed pseudo imitation based on operant conditioning rewards. But the Meltzoff and Moore study suggests intentional imitation in young infants.
• Murray and Trevarthen (1985) showed 2 month olds interacting with their mother in real time versus a non-responsive pre-recorded tape. Infant distress when the mother was non-responsive supported innate rather than learned responses.

Research links secure infant-parent attachment to more synchronous interactions:

• Isabella et al. (1989) assessed interactional synchrony between 30 parent-child dyads using the imitation method from the Meltzoff and Moore (1977) study.
• Found higher levels of behavioral and emotional synchrony in dyads where infants had secure attachments to parents based on the Strange Situation assessment
• Suggests attachment security promotes synchronous parent-infant coordination

Critical Evaluation

• Issues in interpreting studies include problems distinguishing imitation from general activity in infants, failure to replicate findings, and individual differences in attachment security affecting synchrony.
• Many studies involving the observation of interactions between mothers and infants have shown the same patterns of interaction. However, what is being observed is merely hand movements or changes in expression. It is extremely difficult to be certain, based on these observations, what is taking place from the infant’s perspective. Is, for example, the infant’s imitation of adult signals conscious and deliberate?
• Studying caregiver-infant synchrony is challenging since infants’ facial expressions continuously vary. In the Meltzoff & Moore study, behaviors like tongue protrusions happen normally, making it hard to determine intentional imitation versus coincidental expressions. Thus, claims about true interactional synchrony may lack validity without reliably distinguishing imitation from fluctuating infant behavior.

Emotional Attunement

Interactional synchrony can facilitate emotional attunement, as coordinated nonverbal behaviors may help individuals better understand and connect with each other’s emotional states.

Attunement is a subtle process in which the parent is “tuned in” to the child’s emotional needs.

A mom (or caregiver) needs to be good at noticing the tiny and quick changes in a baby’s emotions. She (or he) then has to show the baby through their facial expressions, voice tone, and body language that they understand those emotions and share the experience with the baby.

When things go smoothly, attunement helps a child feel truly understood, accepted, and supported by their mom or caregiver.

This experiment is still considered an important finding in the study of how babies develop.

But, no one can be perfect all the time, so sometimes there will be misunderstandings or mistakes (called “mis-attunement” or “relationship ruptures”).

These bumps in the road are normal, and they can even be good for the relationship between the child and caregiver if the caregiver is able to fix the problem the right way.

In fact, it’s believed that for a strong bond to develop, caregivers only need to get it right about one-third of the time, which is comforting to know!

The Importance of Fathers

Research has revealed that the paternal brain undergoes changes similar to the maternal brain, facilitating caregiving behaviors (Abraham et al., 2014; Feldman, 2015; Swain, 2011).

Fathers show increased gray matter volume, structural reorganization, and functional activation in neural regions linked to motivation, empathy, emotion regulation, sensory integration, and decision-making related to childcare responsibilities (Abraham et al., 2014; Kim et al., 2014).

For example, Abraham and colleagues (2014) used fMRI to compare brain response in mothers, heterosexual fathers, and homosexual fathers viewing images of their children versus unrelated children.

All parent groups showed similar patterns of activation in subcortical reward and motivation regions as well as areas involved in emotion processing, social perception, and executive function when viewing their own child.

However, research also indicates some differences between mothers and fathers in patterns of behavioral synchrony with infants. Whereas mothers tend to display predictable, moderate levels of positive affect attuned to infants’ cues, fathers show sudden intensifications of high-energy positive affect during social play (Feldman, 2003).

In an observational study of parent-infant play, Feldman (2003) described fathers as exhibiting bursts of high intensity stimulation and arousal, contrasting with the lower key gentle affect modulation of mothers.

These complementary interaction styles promote infants’ coping with a range of emotion regulation challenges.

Disruptions in Synchrony

Disruptions in synchrony stemming from maternal mental health issues like postpartum depression can interfere with infants’ building effective emotion regulation capacities, often leading to withdrawal or coping deficits.

This illustrates the importance of synchronous, contingent caregiver-infant interactions for socioemotional development.

Disruptions in parent-infant synchrony can interfere with the development of infants’ emotion regulation capacities (Reck et al., 2004). This has been demonstrated in research on postpartum depression.

Depressed mothers show less synchronous interactions with their infants due to decreased engagement, vocal responses, emotional attunement, and more intrusive behaviors (Field, 2010; Reck et al., 2004).

For example, Reck and colleagues (2004) did an observational study using the still face paradigm with mothers diagnosed with postpartum depression versus non-depressed controls. The still face paradigm assesses infant response and emotion regulation when the parent presents an unresponsive blank face after a period of normal interaction (Tronick, Als & Brazelton, 1978).

Reck et al. found the infants of depressed mothers showed less positive engagement, more withdrawal behaviors (turning away), and poorer emotion regulation compared to the control group infants during the still face period.

Disruptions in typical contingent social responses due to the mother’s depression negatively impacted the infant’s coping and self-soothing abilities during this stressor (Reck et al., 2004).

References

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