Interactional synchrony refers to the coordinated timing and dynamics between a caregiver’s and an infant’s social behaviors during interpersonal exchanges. This synchrony is a dance of sorts relying on the caregiver’s sensitive responsiveness to the child’s cues.
Interactional synchrony is a form of rhythmic interaction between infant and caregiver involving mutual focus, reciprocity, and mirroring of emotion or behavior. Infants coordinate their actions with caregivers in a kind of conversation.
From birth, babies move in a rhythm when interacting with an adult, almost as if they were taking turns. The infant and caregiver are able to anticipate how each other will behave and can elicit a particular response from the other.
For example, a caregiver who laughs in response to their infant’s giggling sound and tickles them is experiencing synchronized interaction.
Characteristics of a synchronous parent-child relationship include:
Behavioral Synchrony
Physiological Synchrony
Physiological synchrony refers to the coupling or coordination of biological processes between the caregiver and infant. Biological synchrony may facilitate behavioral abilities like appropriately timed conversational turn-taking (McFarland, 2001).
Whenattachment relationshipsare strong, researchers observe synchronous patterns in things like:
Implications
By coordinating behavior, physiology, and communication signals with caregivers in a predictable “dance,” infants are guided in establishing foundations for social communication, emotion regulation, and language.
Specifically, research suggests interactional synchrony facilitates language development in areas such as:
Breakdowns in synchrony from conditions like maternal depression or stress can disrupt this process (Reck et al., 2004).
Evidence
Critical Evaluation
Emotional Attunement
Interactional synchrony can facilitate emotional attunement, as coordinated nonverbal behaviors may help individuals better understand and connect with each other’s emotional states.
Attunement is a subtle process in which the parent is “tuned in” to the child’s emotional needs.
This experiment is still considered an important finding in the study of how babies develop.
But, no one can be perfect all the time, so sometimes there will be misunderstandings or mistakes (called “mis-attunement” or “relationship ruptures”).
These bumps in the road are normal, and they can even be good for the relationship between the child and caregiver if the caregiver is able to fix the problem the right way.
In fact, it’s believed that for a strong bond to develop, caregivers only need to get it right aboutone-third of the time, which is comforting to know!
The Importance of Fathers
Research has revealed that the paternal brain undergoes changes similar to the maternal brain, facilitating caregiving behaviors (Abraham et al., 2014; Feldman, 2015; Swain, 2011).
Fathers show increased gray matter volume, structural reorganization, and functional activation in neural regions linked to motivation, empathy, emotion regulation, sensory integration, and decision-making related to childcare responsibilities (Abraham et al., 2014; Kim et al., 2014).
For example, Abraham and colleagues (2014) used fMRI to compare brain response in mothers, heterosexual fathers, and homosexual fathers viewing images of their children versus unrelated children.
All parent groups showed similar patterns of activation in subcortical reward and motivation regions as well as areas involved in emotion processing, social perception, and executive function when viewing their own child.
However, research also indicates some differences between mothers and fathers in patterns of behavioral synchrony with infants. Whereas mothers tend to display predictable, moderate levels of positive affect attuned to infants’ cues, fathers show sudden intensifications of high-energy positive affect during social play (Feldman, 2003).
In an observational study of parent-infant play, Feldman (2003) described fathers as exhibiting bursts of high intensity stimulation and arousal, contrasting with the lower key gentle affect modulation of mothers.
These complementary interaction styles promote infants’ coping with a range of emotion regulation challenges.
Disruptions in Synchrony
Disruptions in synchrony stemming from maternal mental health issues like postpartum depression can interfere with infants’ building effectiveemotion regulation capacities, often leading to withdrawal or coping deficits.
This illustrates the importance of synchronous, contingent caregiver-infant interactions for socioemotional development.
Disruptions in parent-infant synchrony can interfere with the development of infants’ emotion regulation capacities (Reck et al., 2004). This has been demonstrated in research on postpartum depression.
Depressed mothers show less synchronous interactions with their infants due to decreased engagement, vocal responses, emotional attunement, and more intrusive behaviors (Field, 2010; Reck et al., 2004).
For example, Reck and colleagues (2004) did an observational study using the still face paradigm with mothers diagnosed with postpartum depression versus non-depressed controls. The still face paradigm assesses infant response and emotion regulation when the parent presents an unresponsive blank face after a period of normal interaction (Tronick, Als & Brazelton, 1978).
Reck et al. found the infants of depressed mothers showed less positive engagement, more withdrawal behaviors (turning away), and poorer emotion regulation compared to the control group infants during the still face period.
Disruptions in typical contingent social responses due to the mother’s depression negatively impacted the infant’s coping and self-soothing abilities during this stressor (Reck et al., 2004).
References
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Olivia Guy-Evans, MSc
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MSc Psychology of Education
Olivia Guy-Evans is a writer and associate editor for Simply Psychology. She has previously worked in healthcare and educational sectors.
Saul McLeod, PhD
BSc (Hons) Psychology, MRes, PhD, University of Manchester
Saul McLeod, PhD., is a qualified psychology teacher with over 18 years of experience in further and higher education. He has been published in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Clinical Psychology.
