Social Competence in Infancy: A Model of Parent-Infant Interaction.

us out of the "dark ages" during which we believed that the infant began life as a passive blob confronted with the task of making sense out of sensory chaos. Our current view considers the newborn infant to be active, capable of organizing complex information, selectively attentive, and capable of rapid learning. Upon careful examination, it appears that our acceptance of the young infant as a competent though immature organism has been largely confined to the domain of per ceptual and cognitive skills. When we consider research on early social relations, we find that while we were documenting the "remark able" perceptual and cognitive abilities of young infants, early social development continued to be studied under the "passive blob model" of the infant. Recognition of the infant as an active and competent contributor to the developing social relationships with caretakers has been late in coming, and in spite of several recent contributions (e.g., Lewis & Rosenblum, 1974) is not yet widespread. The purpose of this paper is to make explicit the ways in which the competent infant is instrumental in establishing those social con ditions which are considered supportive of infant development. I will argue that the infant is preadapted to be selectively attentive to the kinds of stimulation provided by people and that the infant is equipped with a repertoire of behaviors which effectively capture adult attention and facilitate effective adult-infant interactions. This, in turn, facilitates development. Moreover, I wish to argue that the central reciprocity in early social relationships between infants and caretakers is mediated by mutual enhancement of "feelings of efficacy" as defined by White (1959). The model which I propose focuses upon conditions that con tribute to feelings of efficacy generated in caretakers and infants by their interactions, namely the extent to which each member of the dyad provides the other with contingency experience. Although I mean

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