INTUITIVE PARENTING OF INFANTS IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVES

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The present project serves two main purposes: (1) to improve knowledge on mental and communicative development in preverbal human infants, focusing attention upon didactic tendencies recently detected in intuitive forms of parental behaviors by Papousek and Papousek; and (2) to characterize similarities and differences related to intuitive parenting in two cultures--Caucasian American and Mandarin Chinese--that differ dramatically in the tonal quality of the adult language forms. Interactions between mothers and their infants at the ages of 2 and 4 months have been videotaped for microanalysis of vocal sound patterns, facial expressions, gestures, and other behaviors involved in mother-infant communication. Spectrographic analysis of vocal sounds has been methodologically enriched (in cooperation with Dr. David Symmes, BBCS, LCE) by introduction of innovative programs facilitating computer-aided analysis of pitch patterns. Data on the total of 15 American and 18 Chinese mother-infant dyads have been collected and from this data set 350 one-minute-samples have been selected macroanalytically and auditively categorized in relation to the main types of interactional contexts. Maternal utterances from these samples have been transcribed, translated by a Chinese linguist, and prepared for microanalytical evaluations in further collaboration with Papousek and Papousek at the Laboratory of Developmental Psychobiology in Munich, Germany.