ABSTRACT
During the past 30 years there have been dramatic advances in our understanding of infant development, and in the study of early communication between infants and those who care for them. This has been partly due to the advent of video-recording, allowing the behaviour of adults and babies to be captured on film and then analysed frame by frame. The research findings show the extraordinary sensitivity and sophistication of the responses between infants and adults from the earliest days (Wood 1988). Far from being relatively passive, indifferent to their environment, very young babies are seen to initiate and engage in the subtlest forms of contact with their caretakers, synchronising their movements, demonstrating from birth an ‘intention’ to explore and respond to the aspects of their environment. Of course, in the early weeks the intentions are barely recognisable as such. Purpose and control need the maturing experience of time and practice to develop into competence. However, it is now clear that babies rapidly develop the ability to distinguish between sounds and sights and to respond selectively to them. Within a very short time babies can tell the difference between their mother's face and voice and that of others, and show distress or pleasure according to the expression on her face or the tone of her voice. Whereas in times past we believed it did not matter too much who handled babies, or how they were looked at or spoken to so long as it was with reasonable care, we now understand that it does, that babies are aware and that babies mind. However, despite ‘knowing’, ‘feeling’ and ‘minding’, babies in a relatively helpless position when it comes to communicating these feelings. They are dependent on the adult's ability to recognise and interpret any communication expressed through crying, gazing, smiling, and through the movements of arms and hands (Wood 1988).
