Szufnarowska, J. & Rohlfing, K. J.
Bielefeld University
The mechanism of turn-taking is the basic rule in dialogue and seems to be present even in the earliest interactions between mothers and their infants. At the age of about 2 months, a developmental change takes place which increases the scope of mutual responsiveness: Infants become able to maintain visual attention for a longer time and start to smile socially. Infants? gazing at the interaction partners provides framework for taking turns, and the emergence of social smiling seems to be crucial for the mutual engagement in the face-to-face exchange. An in-game situation can be a good opportunity to practice and develop communication skills in infants as it provides them with an enjoyable context motivating to take a turn. In our study, we contribute to our understanding of the nature of early dialogues. 21 mother-infant dyads from Poland were visited at home, where the mother-infant peek-a-boo play was videotaped from three video camera perspectives. We examined whether the two-month-olds are willing to engage in a peek-a-boo play and under what condition turn-taking in form of social smiling can be observed. We observed that 50 % of the infants reacted with smiles during the play. All infants who were able to establish mutual gaze for over 65 % of interaction time responded with a smile. Every interaction consisted of several units of play. The infants were willing to respond contingently with smile in a given unit of play only when the mothers were able to recruit their attention within 1 second after uncovering. If the infants looked at the mother after longer break, they did not smile. Our results confirm the findings that the mutual attention is a necessary condition for infants? turn-taking but also suggest that infant?s smile follows only the contingent gazing at the mother.