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THE DEVELOPMENT OF MOTHER-INFAI~T CONVERSATIONAL STYLES AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO INFANT-MOTHER ATTACHMENT

Karin Grossmann The vocal interactions throughout the first Year of 49 mother-infant pairs of the North German Longitudi- nal study were analyzed. During the newborn period the themes, structure and addressee of the maternal speech to her infant were assessed. Maternal overall sensiti- vity to her newborn's signals was also rated. Three home visits, when the infant was 2, 6, and Io months old, yielded maternal sensitivity scores from the observations and from the audiotapes frequencies and temporal relationships of 15 categories of infant vocalizations as well as 11 categories of maternal vocalizations. In addition three different mother- infant conversational styles were identified: the "tender" style, "scarce communications" and the "cheerful" style. The Strange Situation procedure yielded the infant's quality of mother attachment and, by a separate ana- lysis, the frequency and latency of the infants "talking" to their mothers before and after separation. Sensitive mothers could be characterized as wanting to know a lot about the newborn's inner states during the newborn period, and preferring the "tender" style of conversation during the first year of the infant's life. The "tender" conversational style was also sig- nificantly related to the secure infant-mother attach- ment behavior pattern at 12 months. All securely attached infants continued to "talk" to their mothers after separation, but so did also half of the physi- cally avoiding infants. No special conversational style accounted for this variation of mother avoidance.