RESPONSIVENESS AND DEPENDENCY ARE DIFFERENT ASPECTS OF SOCIAL CONTINGENCIES - AN EXAMPLE FROM MOTHER AND INFANT SMILES

Data from early mother-infant face-to-face interactions are used to de monstrate that a statistical association, widely accepted as the singl e indicator of sequential dependency between the behavior of two inter actants, in fact reflects a combination of responsiveness and dependen cy comprising two independent aspects of the contingency environment. The derivation of these measures from behavior coded in real-time is i llustrated in an analysis of the reciprocal relations between the smil ing behavior of mothers and their 2- to 5-month-old infants.