Do infants really have an implicit relational knowing?

Infants and their mothers use coherent communicative behaviors to co-regulate their interactions. Over time with repeated experiences of being together they create implicit relational procedures and knowing about the ways they engage with each other. Some of the ways are typical, such as an open handed wave, while others are unique to each mother-infant dyad, such as a particular finger game. The purpose of this study was to investigate infants’ individualized procedural communicative behaviors as strategies for eliciting mothers’ typical response during the Still-Face Paradigm (FFSF). In particular, we aimed to observe 1) the dyadic unique interactive behaviors exhibited by the infant in a normal playful interaction, and 2) whether the unique interactive behaviors are then utilized as eliciting behaviors (UEBs) in a perturbated interactive context, when the mother is acting in an unresponsive manner (Still Faced). 86 mother-infants dyads were observed in the FFSF at one of two different ages: 24 and 43 weeks of age. Play Episode and Still-Face Episode were coded by two independent coders to identify dyadic unique interactive behaviors in the Play Episode, and the same dyadic unique interactive behaviors displayed by the infants in the Still Face episode. Results showed that only the 43-weeks old babies displayed UEBs (29.3%) whereas no UEBs were observed in the 24-weeks old infants, pointing to an important early developmental difference, χ2 (1, N=119) = 25.390, p < 0.001. When comparing across age groups, older infants were more likely to show UEBs than younger infants. These findings suggest that infants acquire UEBs with repetitions of typical interactions with their caretaker and are able to make use of these behaviors with the development of different capacities (cognitive, motor, emotional), in an attempt to elicit a response from an unresponsive mother UEBs can be incorporated into a procedural relational knowledge, which can then be used for different purposes in a different context. This research contributes to the understanding of implicit relational knowing as a form of procedural knowledge that arises in the interactional processes between infants and caregivers.