ABSTRACT
This chapter recommends the careful scrutiny of parent-offspring interactions during the early infantile and childhood periods. It recognizes that similar suggestions have been made, believes that our current level of information about such interactions, gleaned from a wide variety of comparative-developmental sources, makes the recommendation even more meaningful at this time and promises new understanding and effective remediation. The chapter discusses that these more recent researches have revealed potent species-specific interaction mechanisms depicted in terms of adult-offspring contingencies. State and state-related phenomena have been of increasing interest to the research exploring infant development. The conclusion appears unavoidable that communication through postural and facial expressions is a dominant force in "controlling" maternal behavior in the social group, a force absent in the isolated pairs of Jensen et al. and in the nerve-sectioned group of Meier et al.
