Infants Time Their Smiles to Make Their Moms Smile.

ABSTRACT: One of the earliest forms of interaction between mothers and infants is smiling games. While the temporal dynamics of these games have been extensively studied, they are still not well understood. Why do mothers and infants time their smiles the way they do? To answer this question we applied methods from control theory, an approach frequently used in robotics, to analyze and synthesize goal-oriented behavior. The results of our analysis show that by the time infants reach 4 months of age both mothers and infants time their smiles in a purposeful, goal-oriented manner. In our study, mothers consistently attempted to maximize the time spent in mutual smiling, while infants tried to maximize mother-only smile time. To validate this finding, we ported the smile timing strategy used by infants

SUBMITTER: Ruvolo P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4580458 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature