ABSTRACT

There is widespread empirical consensus that infant-caregiver interaction during the first year of life is the source of prelinguistic accomplishments in the child that seem to set the stage for language acquisition (see Harding, this volume). Theoretically, there is agreement that the infant and his mother 1 play complementary but developmentally unequal roles in the transactional process of interaction that leads to these prelinguistic accomplishments. Although the infant is an active interactional partner, his mother is the psychological and cultural arbitrator whose interpretations of his emergent behavior define the intentions and meanings being transacted between them (Braunwald, 1976; Bruner, 1975; Dore, this volume; Kaye, 1979; Lock, 1978, 1980; Newson, 1979; Richards, 1974 a, b; Schaffer, 1977; Shorter, 1974). Thus, the infant must depend upon his mother to provide him with caregiving and to create for him a psychological environment of cognitive, social, and emotional experiences that is sufficiently predictable to permit him to develop internalized expectations of his world and intentional communicative skills.