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This book opens with a presentation of Tronick's important research on the infant-parent relationship. Two of his studies, the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale and the Still-Face Paradigm, serve as the book's lynchpins. Both pinpoint bidirectionality: the biological with the psychological and the infant with the parent.
Bidirectionality is further underlined in crosscultural studies. Different cultural mores lead to different developmental tendencies. Multiple caretakers raise Efe children; consequently, they are less tightly bound to a single caretaker and more socially mobile. Gusii mothers who limit eye contact and tamp down affect display have children who are avoidant of eye contact and less affectively expressive. Tronick notes the infant's impressive variety of coping maneuvers, as well as the bidirectionality between mother and child and the influence of cultural input.
The infant's predisposition for social engagement and his or her active role in the interchange are two underlying tenets. Communication is established with the caregiver. Strategies develop to modify caregiver behavior in order to help the child establish internal regulation and acquire needed resources. This leads to an increase in the child's ability to self-regulate, freeing the child to engage in other developmental tasks. The caregiver's regulation pattern is reflected in the child's personality, social expectations, and sense of self. The child actively influences the caregiver, but must also conform to the caregiver's strategies—strategies that are determined both culturally and uniquely individually.
With this as background, we move on to a series of theoretical formulations, the most central of which are the Mutual Regulation Model and the Dynamic Expansion of Consciousness. These are based on dynamic systems theory, which states that we need to gain energy and meaningful information in order to make sense of our place in the world, our state of consciousness at the moment. A ps