COORDINATED INTERPERSONAL TIMING IN ADULT INFANT VOCAL INTERACTIONS -A CROSS-SITE REPLICATION

Coordinated interpersonal timing exists when the temporal pattern of e ach partner in a dialogue is predictable from that of the other. Using a completely automated microanalytic technique to time the sequence o f vocal sounds and silences in an interaction, we studied 28 four-mont h-old infants in face-to-face play with mother and a female stranger. Fifteen infants were recorded on one site and 13 at another. Time-seri es regression was used to evaluate the direction and magnitude of inte rpersonal prediction. Results indicated that (a) significant coordinat ion (or its absence) occurred at both sites for 90% of the comparisons , and (b) the lag that best predicted the partner was 20 to 30 s at bo th sites. Unlike the labor-intensive microanalytic coding techniques t hat have dominated mother-infant interaction research, this work has t he following advantages: (a) the automated instrumentation times behav ior with a precision unobtainable by the unaided human observer; (b) t he sound-silence variables are unambiguously defined for computer proc essing; and (c) the microanalytic method is applicable to large-sample studies. This automated method has shown its clinical utility in its power to predict 1-year developmental outcomes from 4-month coordinate d interpersonal timing.