There are many behavioural interactions between baby and carer that function to develop and maintain an attachment. For example, David Messer (1978) observed that parents will employ basic strategies such as focusing their communications to the child on objects of current interest, thus ensuring that the child attends to the communication.

In many more subtle ways adults interacting with babies seem to be especially tuned to the baby’s needs, modifying their speech and actions accordingly. Even though a baby cannot speak, communication between carer-infant pairs is rich and complex. Andrew Lock (1980) proposes that a whole range of behaviours that initially do not have any social significance for the infant take on an intended social meaning through the child noting their effects on the mother and then deliberately using them to produce this effect.

                                                                                                      Interactional Synchrony

William Condor & Louis Sander (1974) noted how babies would co-ordinate their actions in time with adult speech, taking turns to contribute to the ‘conversation’. Frame-by-frame analysis of films of babies’ movements to sound recordings of adult conversation. It was found that babies would move in time with the rhythm of the conversation, engaging in a subtle form of turn-taking. In real interactions between baby and carer this results in reciprocal behaviour, with both parties able to elicit responses from the other even though only the adult can speak.. Such synchronised interaction might be described as being like a ‘dance’ between mother and baby.

In 1989 R A Isabella, Jay Belsky & A von Eye found that securely-attached mother-infant pairs were those who had shown more instances of interactional synchrony in home observations during the the first year.

L Murray & Colwyn Travarthen (1985) deliberately interfered with this interactional turn-taking by getting mothers to adopt a ‘frozen face’ expression with their babies. The babies showed serious distress by turning away from their mother’s face and crying. Moreover, infants make deliberate attempts to draw the mother back into the interaction, suggesting that the infant is an active and intentional partner in the communication.

                                                                                                           Social Releasers

According to John Bowlby (1988), the infant elicits caregiving from its mother-figure by means of social releasers - behaviours such as cooing,smiling, crying or simply looking appealing (cute face) - which encourage a response. Bowlby believed human beings are innately programmed to respond to such social releasers. Bowlby considered social releasers critical in the forming of attachments.

                                                                                                               ‘Motherese’

In 1989 Catherine Snow & Charles Ferguson termed ‘motherese’ the distinctive language patterns demonstrated by mothers conversing with young children. (Later, it was sometimes known as ‘parentese’ or ‘caregiverese’.  Motherese differs from usual linguistic patterns in several ways, all of which help communication between adult-baby pairs and draw the child into the communication - thus, helping to establish and cement a relationship. Motherese is usually slow, high-pitched, repetitive, varied in intonation and comprises short simple sentences. One of the most distinctive characteristics of motherese is the ‘singy-songy’ nature of the communication., almost as if the speaker were singing rather than speaking.

Imitation

Andrew Meltzof (1985) - following on from earlier work with Keith Moore - proposed that infants are socially attuned from birth and have an innate ability to relate their actions to those of other people. He argues that infants’ ability to imitate indicates a much more complex process at work than has been generally acknowledged. Imitation, Meltzof says, is a ‘double-edged’ activity which has both social and cognitive implications. In order to imitate, the infant must:-

• Perceive the action to be copied
• Represent the action mentally
• Translate the action into similar actions of their own - which involves a realisation that, in some ways, the other person is ‘like me’
• Organise their motor behaviour so that if fits with the content and sequence of the imitated person’s action

Gavin Bremner (1988) argues that imitation demonstrates the infant’s understanding of self and other people.