Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: The degree to which the mother and child are in the same behavioral and affective state at the same time with respect to the occurrence and intensity is defined as interactional synchrony. Evidence from infancy research suggests that interactional synchrony between parent and infant plays a significant role in promoting later development such as attachment security, joint attention, self-regulation, compliance, and advanced language (Feldman et al., 2004; Isabella et al., 1989). In toddlerhood, positive and responsive interaction with a parent may provide an appropriate environment for a child to practice self-regulatory skills (Lay et al., 1989; Parpal et al., 1985). The establishment and maintenance of joint attention between mother and toddler has also been found to facilitate language acquisition (Rocissano et al., 1987). However, very few studies have investigated interactional synchrony between a mother and a child beyond infancy. Therefore, the goal of the present study was to examine individual differences in mother-toddler interactional synchrony during book reading and to explore the factors that contribute to the individual differences. Specifically, this study was designed to understand the independent and joint contribution of child gender, child temperament, and maternal affect to mother-toddler interactional synchrony during book reading.
49 mothers and their 2½-year-olds participated in the present study. Mothers read two wordless picture books to their toddlers for about 10 minutes at a laboratory playroom. Mother-toddler book-reading interaction was videotaped for later behavioral coding. A 5-second time sampling strategy was employed to code the mother’s and the toddler’s social-affective behavior separately. Interactional synchrony was indexed by the proportion of negative and positive state matches in maternal and child social-affective behaviors including gaze, affective expression, and touch Maternal reports on the Early Childhood Temperament Questionnaire (Putnam et al, 2003) was used to measure toddlers’ temperament characteristics of effortful control (high inhibitory control, high attentional focus and low frustration) and surgency (high attentional shifting and high impulsivity). Maternal affective state was assessed by the Positive Affect and Negative Affect Scale (Watson et al., 1988).
Data analysis revealed that the majority of dyads demonstrated high levels of interactional synchrony indexed by state matches in gaze (87%), and touch (79%). About 45% of dyads had a match in affect, while the other 43% of the time mothers showed a positive affect, while children remained neutral. Overall, 32% of dyads showed interactional synchrony more than 50 % of the time across three behavioral modalities. There were no significant differences in the interactional synchrony between girls and boys. Higher levels of positive affect match between mother and toddler were significantly predicted by toddlers’ effortful control. Both maternal affect and toddler temperament jointly contributed to the negative state match between mother and toddler. Dyads of mothers with negative affect and toddlers with high surgency (impulsive and nonattentive) had more negative affect and tactile matches.
Results from this study suggest individual differences in mother-toddler interactional synchrony during book reading, which may be a joint product of child temperament characteristics and maternal affective state. These findings are consistent with the recent theorization that dyadic interactions between mothers and their young children are bi-directional and co-regulated processes between the two partners.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Political processes within world-systems are often characterized by cycles or waves. Because spatial waves of expansion/contraction occur across all types of world-systems, all such pulsations cannot be rooted in a specific mode of production or mode of accumulation. Rather, these cycles are themselves evidence that polities and world systems are dynamical systems with various feedback loops. Afroeurasia (in conventional terms Asia, Europe, northern Africa) has been linked, at least at the information and luxury goods exchange levels (Chase-Dunn, Manning, and Hall 2000), for two and half millennia or more. There has been much speculation about what processes drive various cycles within world-systems, what mechanisms may lead to (partial) synchrony between some world-systems separated by great distances, and why there is little or no synchrony between others (Denemark et al. 2000; Frank 1993; Grimes 2000). The current state of the field bears a striking similarity to the debates that occurred among population ecologists a few decades ago. We argue in this paper that there is much to be learned from what ecologists have found from their studies, analyses, and models of oscillatory population systems. While ecological models and analytical approaches cannot be imported wholesale, or without adjustment, into world-system problems, they do offer a number of useful insights, and suggestions for future research.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Earlier studies have demonstrated a curious interregional synchrony in the growth and decline of large cities and empires. From about 500 BCE until about 1500 CE cities and empires in East Asia and the West Asian/Mediterranean region were growing and declining in the same periods, whereas intervening South Asia did not conform to these patterns. This study reports our efforts to examine the possible sources of this interregional synchrony by examining the pattern of East Asian climate change. We think that an emerging multicore Afroeurasian world-system may be the culprit, but other possibilities need also to be considered.

Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: Background and Aims: A number of studies have demonstrated the link between maternal sensitivity in early infancy, infant cortisol reactivity, and subsequent attachment security in later infancy. Furthermore, attachment security has been linked to cognitive processes in toddlers, as has maternal synchrony and infant intelligence. However, the search for evidence of infant cortisol reactivity in response to novel situations, maternal-infant synchrony, and their relationships to infant learning is a virtually unexplored area.
Methods: Data were collected on 121 primiparous mothers and their 6-month-old infants. Saliva was collected from mothers and their babies at the beginning of the session, and 30 minutes later, after a 10-min videotaped interaction period and two discrimination tasks. The amount of cortisol in the saliva samples was determined. Behavioral synchrony between mother and infant was assessed using established behavioral criterion by observing specific behaviors of mother (e.g., vocalize, soothe) and infant (explore, fuss/cry) in 10-sec intervals. Infant learning was assessed in two types of discrimination tasks, one involving faces and the other, rhymes. For the face experiment, color photos of womens’ faces were modified using software. One photo was the infant’s mother, another was a female who looked similar to mother, a third looked different mother, and a final photo was a female that every infant viewed. Nonmodified and modified versions of a given face (e.g., the infant’s mother) was displayed simultaneously on screens on the infant’s right and left sides. A standard visual preference paradigm presented sixteen 8-sec trials. For the rhyme experiment, audio recordings were made of each infant’s mother speaking two modern nursery rhymes. Mothers read one rhyme (the familiar rhyme) to their infants as often as they wished during a two-week interval immediately before their session. On alternating trials of the experiment, infants heard the unfamiliar or the familiar rhyme. Looking times toward each side speaker were recorded over 8 trials.
Key Results: Infants whose cortisol measurably declined during the session showed a looking time preference for mother’s face compared to the other three categories of faces, while those whose cortisol did not change or appreciably increased did not. Those infants whose cortisol levels decreased also listened to the familiar rhyme significantly longer than infants whose cortisol increased. Infants whose mothers were in the highest quartile of synchronous behavior with their infants discriminated between modified and nonmodified versions of two face categories, one of which was mother, and showed significantly greater looking time preferences for their mother’s face compared to the other three categories.
Conclusions: Infants’ decreasing cortisol levels and mothers’ greater attunement to her baby both predict 6-month-old infants’ preferences for, and discrimination of, familiar stimuli involving their mothers’ faces and voices.

Publication Type: Individual Poster
Abstract: Background: The current study examines physiological development of emotion regulation, specifically focusing on the interpersonal nature of the development of affective regulation between the mother and infant. The process of developing regulatory skills is interactive between the infant and the parent and may depend on the coordination of both participants. While behavioral synchrony, in early emotional development has been widely studied, less is known about the physiological antecedents of infant-mother attunement. This study focuses on the manner in which mother and infant coordinate their physiological regulatory systems, which may underlie the process of behavioral attunement.
Methods: Six-month-old infants and their mothers participated in an interaction designed to elicit emotional response from both participants. Mothers were instructed to play with their infants for two minutes during the “play” interaction. Next, during the “arm restraint” interaction, mothers were instructed to hold the infant’s hands gently at their sides for one minute. When the infants’ arms were released, the pair participated in a “recovery” session, where mothers soothed their infants for two-minutes. RSA data was recorded during baseline and all parts of the procedure for both the mother and infant.
Results: Mother and infant pairs with both members showing moderate to high levels of RSA withdrawal during play were determined to be “synchronous”. If one or both members of the pair showed little or no RSA withdrawal, the pair was determined to be “asynchronous”. As expected, a one-way ANOVA indicated that synchronous pairs were better able to withdraw RSA during recovery, F(1,34)=4.79,p<.05 for infants, and F(1,34)=6.40,p<.05 for mothers. To partially explain the variance within groups and to further probe the relationship between synchrony and regulation, we conducted a series of 2-way ANOVAs adding the variables of ethnicity and sex of the child. Analyses revealed significant interactions, indicating that variances in race, F(1,30)=5.86,p<.05 for the child, and sex of the child, F(1,32)=4.79,p<.05 for the mothers, may moderate the relationship between attuned physiological synchrony and regulation of emotion.
Discussion: Infants who experience synchrony with their mothers may be better able to modify their arousal during stress because they have learned to control their level of stimulation during play. It also seems that mothers who share physiological synchrony with their infant during play may be better able to regulate during their infant’s distress. This study also hints at possible variance due to ethnicity and sex of the child, which future research can address in greater detail.