Infant Behavior & Development 30 (2007) 213–231

Perturbation of Japanese mother-infant habitual interactions in the

double video paradigm and relationship to maternal playfulness
Shigeru Nakano a,∗ , Kiyomi Kondo-Ikemura a , Emiko Kusanagi b
a Department of Developmental Psychology, Hokkaido Health Sciences University, Sapporo 002-8072, Japan
b Department of Child Education, Kokugakuin College, Japan

Received 18 February 2007; accepted 19 February 2007

Abstract
Double video paradigm (DVP) studies have found contradictory evidence regarding the young infants’ ability to discriminate
their mother’s ‘replay’ image from ‘live’. This study examined the hypothesis that 4-month-old infants whose mothers showed
high-levels-of-playful-behavior are more likely to discriminate social contingency in the DVP. We also examined the relationships
between the infants’ DVP behaviors and mothers’ free-play behaviors at home with their 3-month-old infants. The results supported
our hypothesis. Further, when the mothers’ behaviors were reduced to playful companion (PC) and sensitive support (SS) by a
principal component analysis, the level of PC was closely related to the infants’ detection of social contingency, but SS was not.
The different functions of mothers’ ‘playfulness’ and ‘sensitivity’ in communication with their infants are discussed.
© 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Double video paradigm; Infant intersubjectivity; Playfulness; Communication; Contingency; Japanese mothers

Trevarthen (1979) and Trevarthen and Hubley (1978) advanced a theory of ‘innate intersubjectivity’ to explain
developments in communication over the first year. Trevarthen employed the term ‘intersubjectivity’ to draw attention
to young infants’ awareness of their mother as a communicating person and their appropriately responsive expressive
abilities, both of which were revealed by descriptive microanalysis of film records made in the late 1960s of spontaneous
play between infants and their mothers. The theory was intended to change the view of human social development from
the traditional one – that human social awareness is mediated by instructive or corrective actions of adults in order that
children will become socially responsible according to learned rituals and standards of behavior – to one accepting
that an intuitive sharing of subjective impulses in conscious experience and intentions in relationships is central to the
creation of meaning (Trevarthen, 1993, 2001).
Developmental researchers employing the experimental testing of infant intelligence and learning, and those accus-
tomed to the view of the physically dependent infant with an immature mind rejected the hypothesis of innate
intersubjectivity, in part because “innate” was interpreted as total autogenetic maturation without any parental con-
tribution (e.g. Kaye, 1982; Messer, 1994; Moore & Corkum, 1994; Racine, 2004). The theory that infants are born
‘subjective’ beings, with ‘self awareness’ and intentions was rejected. Stern (1985), who made early observations of
negotiations in mother-infant play, portrayed Trevarthen as alone in maintaining that intersubjectivity is an innate,

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +81 11 778 9094.

E-mail address: s-nakano@hoku-iryo-u.ac.jp (S. Nakano).

0163-6383/$ – see front matter © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2007.02.005
214 S. Nakano et al. / Infant Behavior & Development 30 (2007) 213–231

emergent human capacity, and insisted that, “it is not meaningful to speak of primary intersubjectivity at 3 or 4 months
of age, as Trevarthen (1979) does. This can only refer to protoforms that lack the essential ingredients for being called
intersubjectivity” (pp. 134–135). However, recently, Stern (2004) has conceded that, “an early form of intersubjectivity
is present” (Stern, 2004, p. 85) and suggested that it is based on cross-modal transfer in perceptions of form and timing
of other persons’ communicative movements (cf. Beebe, Sorter, Rustin, & Knoblauch, 2003).
The controversy over the capacity of a young infant for intersubjective consciousness appeared to arise, not only
from different theoretical positions, but also from incompatible methodology in attempts to obtain persuasive evidence.
Trevarthen has insisted repeatedly that the claim that infants have an innate capacity for intersubjectivity has been fully
supported by detailed frame-by-frame analysis of video-recordings of mothers and babies in favorable circumstances
that allow natural sympathy of emotions to arise in intimacy (Trevarthen, 1998). Of necessity, his “evidence” is based
on naturalistic descriptions of detailed, objective observations of video and audio data recorded from a limited number
of mother-infant dyads, most of which were followed longitudinally, by repeated observations over several months.
Researchers using experimental paradigms testing larger numbers of subjects and making observations at a few ages
questioned the validity of the theory, which they argued made a leap in logic between a “general” human attribute
implied by the term “innate” and descriptions of episodes in the lives of “a few” mothers and their infants. Opponents
of the theory have claimed that it avoids explanation of how humans can conceive other humans, simply rooting it in an
innate nature (e.g. Racine, 2004). However, Trevarthen working with Murray developed the closed-circuit double video
paradigm (DVP) to test whether young infants are distressed by their mothers’ inactivity (Murray & Trevarthen, 1985).
This methodology enabled them to demonstrate infants’ sensitivity to social contingency if the mother’s affectionate
and responsiveness was directed to them. In the DVP, the sensitivities of infants’ less than 3 months of age to social
contingencies in interactions with their mothers was first established by making recordings in a closed TV circuit
between them, then a ‘replay’ of the mother was presented to the baby. The experimental procedure was divided into
three phases; in the first phase infants and their mother interacted ‘live’, in real time, in the second phase a short ‘replay’
of their mothers’ behavior from the previous ‘live’ session was played back to the infant, and in the final phase the
‘live’ interaction was again introduced. The replayed recording of the mother presented exactly the same amount of
smiles, vocalizations and gestures as in the ‘live’ one, but this behavior was not systematically contingent with any
behaviors of the infant. Murray and Trevarthen reported that in the ‘replay’ session infants turned away from their
mothers and showed signs of distress as indicated by frowning, grimacing, yawning and an increase in the touching
of their faces and clothes. They concluded that “young infants are sensitive to the contingency of response of human
partner but not just to this. They detect features of persons that are discrepant with learned standards, but do not just
detect such discrepancies. They are ready to engage in interpersonal contacts and form active emotional relationships
with particular persons . . ..” (p. 194).
However, replications of the double video paradigm have shown inconsistent results, fuelling controversy. Hains
and Muir (1996) failed to replicate the original finding of the DVP using infants aged 22–26 weeks in interactions
with their mothers. However, they did replicate the effect with infants between 14 and 26 weeks of age, in interactions
with a stranger. They suggested that infants were not perturbed by the lack of contingent responding during a brief
‘replay’ condition with their mothers at 5 or 6 months, because infants they have not yet developed stable expectancies
about the interactive styles of their mothers at this age. Several researches have objected that Murray and Trevarthen
(1985) studied only four babies between 6 and 12 weeks of age, and suggested that the design did not control for order
effects because the ‘live’ condition used for comparison was always presented before the ‘replay’ condition. They
also proposed that the reported effect may have been an outcome of learning and related to the familiarity of the adult
(Bigelow & Birch, 1999), or due to an increased fussiness over the course of the experiment (Hains & Muir, 1996),
or memory of previous maternal behavior (Hains & Muir, 1996), or to expectations of specific contingent behaviors
from their mothers (Bigelow, MacLean, & MacDonald, 1996; Hains & Muir, 1996). On the other hand, when Stormark
and Braarud (2004) extended the DVP to five sessions, Live1-Replay1-Live2-Replay2-Live3, the results supported
Murray and Trevarthen (1985). As a further refinement, in the second ‘replay’ session the mother was presented with
a ‘replay’ of their infant while the infants saw their mother ‘live’. By this procedure, Stormark and Braarud rule out
the possibility that the infants’ responses during the second ‘replay’ could be accounted for by memory of previous
maternal behavior.
Rochat, Neisser, & Marian (1998) also attempted to replicate Murray and Trevarthen (1985) with two additional
controls; they used the Live1-Tape (Replay)-Live2 sequence for half the subjects and Live1-Live2-Tape sequence for
the rest to counterbalance the order effects in their Experiment 1; they also inserted a Still Face episode just before
 S. Nakano et al. / Infant Behavior & Development 30 (2007) 213–231 215

the Live2 or Tape session (i.e. Live1-Still Face-Live2/Tape) in their Experiment 2. As no differences in the infant’s
response in the ‘live’ and ‘replay’ conditions were found, they concluded that the double-TV method is not an effective
way to test an infant’s early social contingency (Rochat et al., 1998). However, Nadel, Carchon, Kervella, Marcelli,
& Réserbat-Plantey (1999) successfully replicated the original study, with nearly identical results, using a modified
procedure in which a seamless shift was inserted between ‘live’ and ‘replay’ episodes to ensure that the same social
context would be maintained without interruption across the transitions between Live1, Replay and Live2 conditions.
For their 2-month-old infants, smiling and gaze decreased while frowning and mouth closures increased during the
Replay period relative to the Live interaction period.
Individual differences in mothers and infants could affect the results of tests of emotional response to perturbations
in communication. Recently Braarud and Stormark (2006) repeated the DVP with 2-month-old infants and found a
significant negative correlation between the amount of negative affect infants showed and the average time of their
looking at the mother during the ‘live’ sessions. Further, when they separated the infants into a high-negative-affect
group and a low-negative-affect group, the low-negative-affect infants looked significantly more at their mothers than
at other foci during the ‘live’ but not the ‘replay’ sessions, while the high-negative-affect infants did not show this
difference. In Rochat et al. (1998) four of 14 infants in their Experiment 1, and 10 of 31 infants in the Experiment
2 were omitted because of excessive fussiness. Murray and Trevarthen (1985) studied four dyads, two boys and two
girls, but they ran 18 DVP sessions over the 6 week period between the ages of 6 and 12 weeks, though they did not
report how frequently each dyad was recorded. As each of dyads must have been in the DVP at least several time, they
would have become accustomed to the situation to some degree. Importantly, Murray and Trevarthen (1985) recorded
the effects of ‘replay’ only after the mother and her baby had been actively and positively engaged in interaction.
Nadel et al. (1999) also controlled the quality of maternal interaction to ensure that only optimal interactions in a ‘live’
condition were used to replay “positive” maternal behavior.
It can reasonably be supposed that if young infants are to be able to detect failure of their mothers’ responses in a
‘replay’ compared to the preceding ‘live’ interaction they should first be accustomed to engaging pleasurably in active
and playful exchange with their mothers. In other words, a more likely explanation of ‘failure to replicate’ is that the
experimenter failed to obtain positive engagement in ‘live’ contact. A disengaged infant cannot demonstrate sensitivity
to loss of contingency in the mother’s behavior (Nadel et al., 1999). In general, not only the temporal contingency
of the mother’s responses but also the shared quality (joyfulness and/or playfulness) of the interaction with her will
affect the ability of young infants to distinguish between communicative and non-communicative social interaction
with their mothers.
During a ‘replay’ session of the DVP mothers witness their infants being less responsive and avoidant, and they are
not informed that they are attempting to communicate with their infant’s ‘replayed’ image. The mothers consequently
have an uncomfortable experience, feeling there must be ‘something wrong’ in their infant’s responses or in their own
behavior. In fact, Murray and Trevarthen (1985, 1986) already reported that during the ‘replay’ session, the mother’s
baby-talk systematically changed to a less-affectionate tone, and her utterances indicated that she felt her infant was
strangely unaware and avoidant.
We propose that previous studies have not considered whether mothers may differ in how they react to
this experience. The possibility that the DVP also disturbs maternal communicative activities with the infant
has generally been disregarded. This may be because researchers have focused solely on the infant’s reactions
to loss of contingency in engagement with the mother, and most studies have adopted the three condi-
tions sequence (Live-Replay-Live). In such a procedure the influences on mothers may not be taken into
account because the ‘replay’ session is compared with the first ‘live’ session. Only one study (Stormark &
Braarud, 2004) confirmed that the mother’s communication is changed by an experience of loss of commu-
nication. When they presented mothers with a ‘replay’ image of their infant, there was a significant decline
in the proportion of time in which they were gazing at the image of their infants. However, Stormark and
Braarud (2004) did not measure other behaviors of the mothers, and they did not examine possible individual
differences in the susceptibility of mothers to disturbance by the experience of their infants being uncommunica-
tive.
It is likely that infants who have been accustomed to sensitive, contingent responses from their mothers would show
more negative affect in response to their non-contingent behavior in the DVP ‘replay’. Interactions between individual
differences in infants or mothers, or sample biases and the strictness of experimental procedures may also account for
the variation of findings mentioned above. Legerstee and Varghese (2001) claimed that the inconclusive results of these
216 S. Nakano et al. / Infant Behavior & Development 30 (2007) 213–231

social contingency studies cast doubt on the idea that the perception of contingency is important for prosocial behavior
and intersubjectivity. They pointed out that one possible explanation for the inconsistent results might be that infants had
different histories of interaction. In their study, 41 2- to 3-month-old infants were videotaped while interacting ‘live’ and
in ‘replay’ with their mothers over television monitors. One week later, set up to communicate via television monitors
again, they viewed the ‘live’ and ‘replay’ recordings of the previous visit. Mothers’ ‘affect mirroring’ (AM) was
measured according to the level of attention maintenance, warm sensitivity, and social responsiveness they displayed.
Then they were separated into high (HAM) and low (LAM) groups on the measure. The results demonstrated that
infants with mothers in the HAM group discriminated between the ‘live’ and the ‘replay’ conditions with ‘smiles’,
‘vocalizations’, and ‘gazes’, but infants in the LAM did not show such a clear differences. It was suggested that infants’
sensitivity to changes in the continuity of contingent responses, emotional availability or possibilities of collaborating
actions between the ‘live’ and the ‘replay’ conditions may depend on the accustomed maternal interactive style. It
follows that inconsistent results in preceding studies might be due to differences in the mothers, who may have been
more homogeneous or heterogeneous in their interactive style in some studies than in others.
Cross-cultural studies have shown repeatedly that Japanese mother-infant interactions are characterized by greater
and more frequent non-verbal and positive emotional expressions and abundant physical contact compared with their
Western counterparts (Caudill & Weinstein, 1969; Fogel, Toda, & Kawai, 1988; Rothbaum, Pott, Azuma, Miyake, &
Weisz, 2000; Shand & Kosawa, 1985). In the DVP, mothers and infants are seated separately in two different rooms
and are requested to interact with their partner through an image in a TV monitor. That artificial procedure may inhibit
culturally familiar ways of communication and seem to impose some responsibility on them to invent a novel way of
communication. Those infants whose mothers are used to keeping physical closeness by means of non-verbal proximal
communication with them in their everyday interactions may express more distress than less physically intimate dyads
throughout the experimental session.
As Nadel et al. (1999) demonstrated, it is necessary to ensure positive or playful behavior of the partner for young
infants to perceive the partner’s ‘live’ propensity for communication. Many studies have, however, not clarified whether
infants responded solely to the temporal contingency of the mother’s behaviors or also to shared positive affect and
playfulness, because only frequency of infants’ gaze at their mother was recorded and behaviors of the mothers have
not been assessed. Consequently, we do not know whether or not infants with a more playful mother display more and
richer intersubjective communication than infants with a non-playful mother.
The first concern of the present study is whether infants with a more playful mother will display frequent gaze at
their mother in a ‘live’ session and show a decline of eye-contact in a ‘replay’ session compared with infants with a
non-playful mother. Second, we examine whether experiences with non-responsive social behavior during a ‘replay’
session cause both infants and mothers to show a negative carryover effect on a subsequent ‘live’ session; that is,
whether the positive expressions and gaze at a partner of both mothers and infants will decline in the ‘live’ session
following the ‘replay’ session. Further, such a negative effect may be more influential on mother-infant dyads who
engage in less playful interactions in their everyday life at home.
Finally, taking into consideration the cultural characteristics of the Japanese mother-infant dyads described in cross-
cultural studies as cited above, especially their proneness to seeking physical closeness, it can be expected that the DVP
procedure of separation and the distal mode communication may affect the dyads that show this proximity seeking
more strongly.
To test these hypotheses we set up a longitudinal project to record the development of the intersubjective relationship
between mother and infant. Mothers were recruited in the project a few months before their delivery. When the infants
were 3 months of age, each mother was asked to videotape herself in free-play with her baby at home as the “video
diary for my baby“. They also filled in an infant temperament questionnaire (the Japanese Revised Infant Behavior
Questionnaire (IBQ-R), Gartstein & Rothbart, 2003; Nakagawa & Sukigara, 2005). About 1 month later, they came to
our laboratory and participated in the DVP experiment.

1. Method

1.1. Participants

Forty pregnant women, who were recruited via Healthy Maternity Seminar organized by The Japanese Foundation
of Mother-Child Health where the first author served as a lecturer, participated in our longitudinal project (Sapporo
 S. Nakano et al. / Infant Behavior & Development 30 (2007) 213–231 217

Longitudinal Study on Cross-Contextual Development: SappoLong) from 0 to 18 months of age. The participants were
asked to record the “video diary for my baby”, which involved videotaping free-play interactions with their baby at
home at regular intervals by themselves from 2 weeks after the birth, to answer several questionnaires, and to visit our
laboratory when their babies were 4, 10 and 13 months old.
Data from 35 mother-infant dyads on the video diary and IBQ-R were available for the analysis (20 boys and 15
girls; mean age = 16 weeks; range = 15–17 weeks). In the fourth month, 40 mother-infant dyads (21 boys and 19 girls)
were invited to participate in the double video experiment, but six dyads were excluded, because of technical problems
(one boy) or excessive crying (three boys and two girls). The final sample for the DVP was 34 dyads (17 boys and
17 girls; mean age = 20 weeks; range = 19–21 weeks). We chose the age of 4 months for the DVP experiment because
in our society it is difficult to recruit infant participants before 3 months, when infants are judged capable of holding
their head up. Thirty-one dyads (16 boys and 15 girls) participated in both the 3 month and 4 month assessments. The
following analyses report the results of 34 infants at 4 months, and the results of 31 infants to describe the relationships
between the findings for 31 infants at 3 months and 4 months.

1.2. Apparatus and procedures

The apparatus used for the DVP was the same closed-circuit TV-system as originally developed by Murray and
Trevarthen (1985) (see Fig. 1). In the laboratory it was explained to the mother that the purpose of the study was
to investigate mother-infant communication via a kind of Videophone. The mother was not informed about the shift
between the ‘live’ and the ‘replay’ sessions. When the mother and her infant had adjusted to the laboratory setting, each
of them was seated separately in two adjacent sound-proof rooms and invited to communicate through the closed-circuit
TV-system. TV monitors equipped in each room presented full-face life size images and the voice of the partner and
allowed them to have direct eye-contact with each other. During experimental sessions, all vocalizations and images
from the infant were recorded on VCR1, VCR2 for those from the mother and for the ‘replay’ session, and VCR3
for the future analysis (Fig. 1). The experimental procedure consisted of five 30 s sessions; Live1, Replay1, Live2,
Replay2, Live3. In the ‘live’ sessions, both the infant and the mother could engage face-to-face via the TV monitors. In
a ‘replay’ session, infants were presented a recording of their mother’s image from the immediately preceding televised
‘live’ session recorded approximately 30 s earlier.

Fig. 1. Outline of the apparatus for the double video communication.

218 S. Nakano et al. / Infant Behavior & Development 30 (2007) 213–231

1.3. Coding and reliability

1.3.1. Double video at 4 months

Van Egeren, Barratt, & Roach (2001) found that a 3 s time period best captures contingencies of communication
between mother and infants. Therefore, we employed a 3 s interval time-sampling method using The Observer Video-
Pro 5.0. The category system recorded frequency of ‘gaze direction’, ‘vocalizations’, and ‘emotional expressions’.
Each category included mutually exclusive sub-categories (see Table 1 for categories and definitions), as follows:
Infant behavior categories were gaze direction: to mother/elsewhere (including looking blank), vocalization: non-
distress/distress/silence, and emotional expressions: positive/negative/neutral.
Mother behavior categories were gaze direction: infant/elsewhere, vocalization: call name/talk/silence, emotional
expressions: smile/neutral, and playfulness.
Inter-coder agreements were confirmed on the scores for 10 dyads, and the scores ranged from 89 to 100%.

1.4. Scoring maternal behaviors at the 3-month free-play in the “video diary”

At the infant age of 3 months, participants were presented a Lamaze Puppy Tune packed in a gift box. They
were not informed in advance what had been packed in the box. Mothers were instructed to video-tape their free-
play interactions with the infant by themselves for more than 10 min immediately after they opened the present,
using a video-camera set on a tripod in front of them. The first 10 min of each of their recorded interactions
was scored on a 5-point rating scale which included: (a) mother-infant relationship; physical closeness between
the mother and her infant, (b) maternal behaviors; didactic behaviors, talkativeness, emotionality, appropriateness,
‘mind-reading’, playfulness, companionship, and sensitivity (see Table 2 for definitions of these categories). Rat-
ings were done by a main-coder who was naı̈ve to the purpose of the study. To compute reliability, agreement of
rating scores for 20 dyads between the main-coder and a sub-coder was calculated. The scores ranged from 75 to
95%.
Mothers were also asked to answer IBQ-R (the Japanese Revised Infant Behavior Questionnaire).

Table 1
Coding categories used for scoring infants’ and mothers’ behavior in the double video paradigm
Categories Sub-categories Definitions

Infant behaviors
Gaze direction Mother Any gaze directed at mother
Elsewhere Any looking directed at surroundings, or at the monitor blankly
Vocalization Non-distress Any utterance except distress utterances
Distress Unpleasant/distressed/fussy utterances
Silence No utterance
Emotional expressions Positive Smiling/laughing
Negative Unpleasant/frowning/sad expressions on the face
Neutral Not special but ordinary facial expressions
Maternal behaviors
Gaze direction Infant Any gaze directed at their infants
Elsewhere Any looking directed at surroundings
Vocalization Call name Calling their infant’s name
Talk All utterances/talk/questions to their infant
Silence No utterance
Emotional expressions Smile Cheek-raising and the sides of the mouth turning up while looking at their
infant
Neutral Not special but ordinary facial expressions
Playfulness Playful expressions (exaggerated/comical facial expressions/gestures/body
movements) or, playful speech (exaggerated/comical speech/voice)
 S. Nakano et al. / Infant Behavior & Development 30 (2007) 213–231 219

Table 2
Rating scales for “video diary for my baby” at 3 months
Categories Definition

Relationship
Physical closeness Frequency of body contact between the mother and her infant including holding/carrying the infant or laying
him/her on her lap
Mother’s behavior
Didactic behavior Frequency of a mother’s behavior trying to teach her infant or to make them imitate how to play with Puppy Tune,
or to make them to take a particular posture/motion to play with it
Talkativeness Frequency of a mother’s vocalization to her infant including talking, singing a nursing song, or onomatopoeias
Emotionality Balance of positive or negative quality of expressed emotions
Appropriateness Frequency of a mother’s behavior to her infant whether to be appropriate/inappropriate for the infant’s achieved
ability
Mind-reading Frequency of a maternal comment on internal states/intentions of her infant
Playfulness Frequency of a mother’s behavior to her infant with exaggerated, mocking, or clowning
actions/expressions/voices/gestures/body movements
Companionship Mother’s attitude toward sharing activities with her infant together rather than supporting/guiding behaviors
Sensitivity Degree of mother’s prompt, timely and appropriate responses to her infant’s signals

2. Results

2.1. Mean frequency of infants’ and mothers’ behaviors during ‘live’ sessions

The mean frequency of infants’ behaviors during the three ‘live’ conditions showed that infants in our sample
were very quiet and frequently gazed at their mother (70% of the all conditions) with a neutral face (86%) in silence
(89%). In short, our infants very rarely vocalized or expressed either a positive or a negative emotion. The frequency
of their gazing at the mother was lower than reported by Murray and Trevarthen (1985) (about 90%), but similar to
that observed by Nadel et al. (1999) (about 60%).
The mean frequency of mothers’ behaviors, on the other hand, showed that mothers were watching their infant most
of the time (99%), often talking (48%) and smiling (59%) to their infants, and occasionally interacting playfully (28%)
(see Table 3). However, they were far less talkative and expressive in comparison with those studied by Nadel et al.
(1999), who found that the proportions of mothers’ vocalizations and smiling were 91 and 76%, respectively.

Table 3
Mean frequency of infants’ and mothers’ behavior during three live conditions
Categories Infant Mother

% S.D. % S.D.

GAZ MOM 70.29 22.12 INF 99.41 1.92

ELS 29.71 22.12 ELS 0.59 1.92
VCL NDS 8.04 13.39 CLN 20.39 19.28
DST 3.04 8.70 TLK 47.55 22.37
SLC 88.92 15.87 SLC 13.04 13.76
EME POS 10.69 15.69 SML 58.92 26.00
NEG 3.62 10.55
NTL 85.69 16.89 NTL 41.08 26.14
PLY – – – – 26.48 27.79

Note. GAZ = gaze, VCL = vocalization, EME = emotional expression, MOM = mother, ELS = elsewhere, NDS = non-distress, DST = distress,
SLC = silence, POS = positive, NEG = negative, SML = smile, NTL = neutral, INF = infant, CLN = call name, TLK = talk, PLY = playfulness.
220 S. Nakano et al. / Infant Behavior & Development 30 (2007) 213–231

2.2. Correlations between infants’ and mothers’ behaviors during three ‘live’ sessions

Table 4 shows Spearman’s rank correlations (rs ) between infants’ and mothers’ behaviors during all the three ‘live’
sessions. Maternal playfulness was significantly correlated with the infants’ gaze at the mother through all the three
‘live’ sessions, whereas maternal smiles did not show any relation to the infants’ gaze at the mother though they
related to the infant’s positive expressions in the Live2 and Live3 sessions. More interestingly, the correlations between
mothers’ smiling and playfulness in all the three ‘live’ sessions were not significant (Live1, rs = .04; Live2, rs = .04;
Live3, rs = .27). On the other hand, the mothers’ neutral expressions correlated negatively with the infants’ gaze at the
mother and the infants’ smiling through all the three ‘live’ sessions. This finding indicated that differences in maternal
positive expressions cannot account for the individual differences in infants’ sensitivities to social contingency.
However, during the Replay1 and the Replay2 sessions none of these relationships was found. As infants were
presented with the same behaviors of their mother in the ‘replay’ sessions as in the preceding ‘live’ session, the
difference indicates that the infants were able to detect non-contingent maternal actions during ‘replay’ sessions.

2.3. Comparison of the mean frequency of infants’ gaze at the mother between the ‘live’ and the ‘replay’ sessions

Our experimental design consisted of three ‘live’ and two ‘replay’ conditions, with two paired sessions of ‘Live1
and Replay1’ and ‘Live2 and Replay2’, and followed by Live3. We analyzed the data in three parts. First, to examine

Table 4
Correlations between infant’ (row) and mother’ (column) behaviors in all the three live conditions
Categories VCL EME PLY

CLN TLK SLC SML NTL

Live 1
GAZ MOM −0.23 0.01 −0.56*** 0.20 −0.34* 0.38**
VCL SLC 0.04 0.45*** 0.02 −0.25 0.41** −0.17
EME POS −0.21 0.05 −0.22 0.12 −0.32* 0.30
NEG 0.20 −0.03 0.27 −0.14 0.34* −0.35*
Live 2
GAZ MOM −0.43** 0.06 −0.08 0.21 −0.35* 0.44**
VCL SLC 0.34* −0.30 −0.11 0.17 −0.16 0.09
EME POS −0.13 0.05 −0.25 0.38** −0.30 0.27
NEG 0.23 −0.01 −0.08 −0.23 0.11 −0.05
Live 3
GAZ MOM −0.14 0.00 −0.10 0.29 −0.31* 0.37**
VCL SLC 0.19 0.03 0.02 −0.09 0.14 −0.20
EME POS 0.10 −0.09 −0.06 0.50*** −0.50*** 0.24
NEG −0.02 0.01 0.03 −0.52*** 0.49*** −0.20
Replay 1
GAZ MOM 0.02 −0.04 −0.34* −0.05 0.05 0.24
VCL SLC 0.26 −0.20 0.07 −0.17 0.08 −0.07
EME POS −0.03 −0.16 −0.03 0.16 −0.33 0.30
NEG 0.15 0.01 −0.01 −0.21 0.32 −0.21
Replay 2
GAZ MOM −0.03 0.04 0.04 −0.03 −0.05 0.18
VCL SLC 0.30 0.02 −0.26 0.21 −0.20 0.00
EME POS 0.10 −0.06 −0.05 0.04 −0.14 0.14
NEG −0.02 0.06 −0.14 0.12 −0.13 0.10

Note. GAZ = gaze, VCL = vocalization, EME = emotional expression, MOM = mother, SLC = silence, POS = positive, NEG = negative, SML = smile,
NTL = neutral, INF = infant, CLN = call name, TLK = talk, PLY = playfulness.
* p < .05.
** p < .01.
*** p < .001.
 S. Nakano et al. / Infant Behavior & Development 30 (2007) 213–231 221

Fig. 2. Mean proportional infant gaze at mother during the Live1, Replay1, Live2, Replay2, Live3 sequences.

overall changes in infants’ gaze at the mothers, all five sessions were compared together. Second, we compared infants’
gaze at the mothers between Live1 and Replay1, and the Live2 and Replay2 sessions. Finally, to test for a “fatigue
effect” (Bigelow & Birch, 1999), we looked at changes in infants’ gaze at the mothers during the three ‘live’ sessions.
Fig. 2 shows the mean proportion of infants’ gaze at the mother during the Live1, Replay1, Live2, Replay2, and
Live3 conditions. The ANOVA of the infants’ gaze at the mother during all the five sessions yielded a significant
main effect (F(1, 33) = 15.08, p < .001), which demonstrated that infants gazed at their mother with unequal frequency
through five sessions. Then to compare mean frequency of the infants’ gaze at the mother between the Live1 and the
Replay1, and between the Live2 and the Replay2, repeated measures ANOVAs were conducted. The results showed
that there were significant differences in the infants’ gaze at the mother during both pairs of the live-replay sessions
(F(1, 33) = 7.09, p = .01; F(1, 33) = 6.31, p < .05, respectively). Thus, it was shown that the 4-month-old infants in our
sample did distinguish non-contingent behaviors of the mothers from contingent behaviors as the 2- to 3-month-olds
did in the study of Murray and Trevarthen (1985).
In order to test for a ‘fatigue effect’, that is, to see if a fall in infants’ gazing at their mother in ‘replay’ sessions may
have been due to tiredness or declining interest in watching the same person over time rather than perception of lack
of contingency, all three ‘live’ sessions were compared to see if the frequency of infants’ gaze at the mother changed
in the Live2 and Live3 sessions following the ‘replay’ sessions. A repeated measures ANOVA indicated that there was
no significant difference between the three ‘live’ sessions (F(2, 66) = 1.98, ns). Therefore, it can be said that carryover
effects by fatigue from watching the same person repeatedly were not confirmed in our sample.

2.4. Comparison of the mean frequency of infants’ gaze at the mother between infants with the HPB mothers and
with the LPB mothers

It became clear from our results that 4-month-old infants do detect the difference between contingent and non-
contingent engagement with their mothers. However, it is also evident that there are individual differences, since
mothers’ playfulness significantly correlated with the infants’ gaze at them (see Table 4). Apparently, playful interactions
drew infants’ attentions to their mothers and facilitated the infants’ sensitivity to the social contingency. The infant’s
response to loss of contingent responsiveness in the mother’s behavior may depend on the mother’s habitual playfulness.
To confirm the influence of maternal playfulness on infants’ attention and sensitivity, the infants were divided into
two groups of equal number separating high playful (HPB) from low playful (LPB) in the rank-order of frequency
of the mothers’ playful behaviors. The rank-order assigned in this way was not stable, but changed with each of
the ‘live’ sessions. In other words, HPB and LPB infant-mother pairs were not the same throughout the sessions.
222 S. Nakano et al. / Infant Behavior & Development 30 (2007) 213–231

Fig. 3. Comparison of frequency of infant’s gaze at mother between infants with the HPB mothers and with the LPB mothers.

Nevertheless, nearly half of mother-infant pairs were consistently ranked as HPB (n = 8, 24%) or LPB (n = 7, 21%) in
all sessions. Maternal playfulness ranged from the highest score (10) to the lowest (0) – the mean score of Live1 was
3.12 (S.D. = 3.42), of Live 2, 2.97 (S.D. = 3.25), and of Live 3, 2.03 (S.D. = 2.71) – and in each session about half were
rated at point 1 on the playfulness score. The ratio of HPB mothers to LPB mothers was consistent at approximately
3:4 (15:19 in Live1 and Replay1; 15:19 in Live2 and Replay2, and 13:21 in Live3). The two-way ANOVA of the
infants’ gaze at the mother yielded significant main effects of maternal playfulness group (F(1, 160) = 12.66, p < .01)
and of the conditions (F(1, 160) = 12.66, p < .05) (see Fig. 3). A series of follow-up analyses showed significant group
differences between the Live1 and the Replay1 (F(1, 65) = 4.80, p < .05), Live2 and Replay2 (F(1, 64) = 4.99, p < .05),
and Live3 (F(1, 32) = 4.99, p < .05), which indicated that the infants with HPB mothers gazed more at their mothers
than infants with LPB mothers, and that their gaze behavior distinguished sensitively between socially contingent and
non-contingent behaviors of their mothers.

2.5. Effects of perturbed experience during the ‘replay’ sessions on mothers

During ‘replay’, mothers may have felt uncomfortable as a result of their unsuccessful efforts to interact with their
infants, who appeared less attentive and responsive. To test for an influence of such negative experience on mothers’

Fig. 4. Changes in maternal behaviors through the DVP sequences.

 S. Nakano et al. / Infant Behavior & Development 30 (2007) 213–231 223

interactions with the infants, changes in mothers’ behaviors through the three ‘live’ sessions were examined. The results
indicated overall decrease of frequency in mothers’ positive behaviors and, conversely, an increase of frequency in
negative behaviors in the Live3 session (Fig. 4). Wilcoxon signed-ranks test for each of mothers’ behaviors between the
Live1 and the Live3 sessions showed significant decreases of frequency in call infant’s name (z = −1.98, p < .05) and
smiles (z = −3.07, p < .001), and significant increases of frequency in silence (z = 3.00, p < .001) and neutral expression
(z = 3.37, p < .001). That is, it was confirmed that mothers’ behaviors changed to more negative expressions through the
three sessions. Furthermore, when the frequency of neutral expression in the HPB mothers during the Live3 session
was compared to that of the LPB mothers a significant difference was found (z = 12.23, p < .05) indicating that this
negative experience in the mothers was more influential on the behavior of LPB mothers than for the HPB mothers.
However, a significant positive relation between mothers’ smiles and infants’ emotional expressions, and a negative
relation between mothers’ neutral expressions and infants’ gaze at the mother were also found during the Live3 session
(see Table 4). This suggests that the negative change in mothers’ expressions was in immediate response to the infants’
behaviors rather than an independent outcome from mothers’ past experiences. In fact, the Live3 session also showed
a declined in infants’ gaze at the mother, but this trend was not statistically significant (see Fig. 2).

2.6. Relationship between maternal behaviors in the 3-month free-play and in the 4-month DVP

To explore the relationship between maternal behaviors during the 3-month free-play at home and the 4-month DVP,
a principal components analysis was performed on the scores of the eight rating scales of maternal behaviors during
the 3-month free-play. After varimax rotation, a three-factor solution was chosen, which accounted for 79.8% of the
total variance. Factor 1 positively loaded high on talkativeness, emotionality, playfulness and companionship, with the
highest score for playfulness. As all these behavior categories imply a positive, joyful and friendly attitude of mothers,
it was named “playful companion” (PC). Factor 2 positively loaded high on appropriateness and sensitivity, and
negatively on didactic behavior, and was named “sensitive support” (SS). Factor 3 loaded high only on mind-reading
(MD) alone. Table 5 shows the results of this analysis.
The three factors were analyzed to find if they showed correlations between the infants’ gaze at their mother during
each of five sessions and each of the mean average of mothers’ behaviors in the 4-month DVP. Table 6 shows the results
of Spearman’s rank correlation test. The most important result was that the PC constantly showed significant relations
to the infants’ gaze at their mothers during the Live1 and the Live2 sessions at 4 months, but not in the Replay1 and the
Replay2. However, SS and MD did not show any significant relations. That is, the infants with mothers who are likely to
be talkative and playful, expressing positive emotions and trying to share things with their infants in ‘companionship’
showed more gaze at the mothers during the ‘live’ sessions, in comparison with the infants whose mothers sensitively
supported them or were likely to take care of the infants’ intentions. The infants with playful mothers were also more
sensitive to the non-contingent behaviors of their mothers during the ‘replay’ sessions.
Further, the PC factor identified in the behavior of mothers at home with their infant at 3 months was strongly
related to mothers’ playfulness with their 4-month-olds in the DVP sessions. Mothers were divided into ‘high’ (n = 16)
and the ‘low’ (n = 15) groups in the rank-order of the playful companion score (HPC/LPC) from the home recordings.
These groups were then compared with the classification of HPB mothers (n = 15) and LPB mothers (n = 16) based
on the rank-order of the total mean score of playfulness in all the three ‘live’ sessions with their 4-month-olds.
Eleven of the 31 mothers (35.5%) were classified as HPC-HPB, and another 11 mothers were LPC-LPB, i.e. two-

Table 5
Results of a principal component analysis followed by varimax rotation on the rating scores of maternal behaviors at 3 months “video diary”
Behavior categories Factor 1 Factor 2 Factor 3

Didactic behavior −0.46 −0.68 0.02

Talkativeness 0.74 −0.14 0.38
Emotionality 0.88 0.07 −0.12
Appropriateness −0.17 0.86 0.01
Mind-reading −0.03 −0.07 0.96
Playfulness 0.91 0.24 −0.17
Companionship 0.78 0.44 0.04
Sensitivity 0.35 0.79 −0.22
224 S. Nakano et al. / Infant Behavior & Development 30 (2007) 213–231

Table 6
Correlations between mother’s behaviors in the 3 months “video diary” and the 4 months DVP
Infant Mother

GAZ VCL EME VCL EME

MOM SLC SML NTL CLN TLK SLC SML NTL PLY

Live 1
PC 0.35* −0.13 0.20 −0.18 −0.40* −0.06 −0.15 0.20 −0.35* 0.51**
SS −0.04 −0.47** 0.20 −0.18 −0.15 −0.31 −0.03 0.29 −0.49** 0.38*
MR 0.17 0.15 0.31 −0.35* −0.20 0.25 −0.02 0.08 0.06 −0.02
Live 2
PC 0.45** −0.11 0.31 −0.26 −0.53** −0.19 0.04 0.22 −0.38* 0.61***
SS 0.23 −0.16 0.01 −0.10 −0.24 −0.38* 0.32 0.19 −0.19 0.30
MR 0.08 −0.03 0.24 0.01 −0.11 0.27 −0.51** 0.01 0.02 0.08
Live 3
PC 0.24 −0.22 0.26 −0.30 −0.19 −0.17 −0.08 0.28 −0.35* 0.51**
SS 0.49** −0.25 −0.10 −0.02 −0.12 −0.34 0.13 0.34 −0.34 0.22
MR −0.17 0.26 0.19 −0.11 −0.08 0.19 −0.26 −0.05 0.01 0.11
Replay 1
PC 0.07 −0.14 0.30 −0.32*
SS −0.20 −0.18 0.02 −0.05
MR 0.28 0.11 0.18 −0.10
Replay 2
PC 0.01 −0.27 0.02 −0.03
SS 0.03 −0.32 −0.23 −0.03
MR 0.12 0.31 −0.08 0.23

Note. PC = playful companion, SS = sensitive support, MR = mind-reading, GAZ = gaze, VCL = vocalization, EME = emotional expression,
MOM = mother, SLC = silence, SML = smile, NTL = neutral, CLN = call name, TLK = talk, PLY = playfulness.
* p < .05.
** p < .01.
*** p < .001.

thirds of mothers were consistently more playful or less playful over the 1 month between recordings (x2 (1) = 5.49,
p < .01).
Interestingly, however, in the Live3 session these relationships were changed. Instead of the PC factor, the SS factor
took a more prominent role, showing a significant relation with infants’ gaze at the mother (see Table 6). In addition,
the SS factor had marginally significant positive correlations with mothers’ smiles (rs = .34, p = .06), and a negative
relation with talk (rs = −.34, p = .06) and neutral expression (rs = −.34, p = .06). This suggested that the mothers who
ranked higher on the SS score looked at their infants with a smile without talking to them during the Live 3 sessions
in where it was supposed that they were experiencing some level of stress. The unique effect of the SS factor may,
therefore, be activated in a situation where the mother is under stress.
The third factor, ‘mind-reading’ did not yield meaningful results.
It was predicted that our sample might show a culture-specific reaction when physical closeness between a mother
and her infant was disturbed. The mean score of physical closeness during the 3-month free-play was, in fact, 3.45
(S.D. = 1.59), which means that usually the infant is located within the mother’s reach. A Spearman rank correlation
test found that there was significant correlation between the ‘closeness’ score and the mothers’ silence during the
Live3 session (rs = .45, p = .01). Then, association between the rank-orders of the physical closeness score and the
mothers’ silence score was examined. The result was highly significant (x2 (1) = 8.02, p < .01), indicating that mothers
who maintained more physical closeness with their infants were likely to be silent during the Live3 session, and vice
versa. Mothers appeared likely to feel stress during Live 3, and the mothers with a stronger preference of physical
closeness to their infant may have been more sensitive to this stress.
Finally, influences of infants’ temperament measured at 3 months on the mother-infant interaction observed in the
DVP at 4 months were also examined. A Spearman rank correlation test was conducted between each of three IBQ-R
 S. Nakano et al. / Infant Behavior & Development 30 (2007) 213–231 225

component factors for mothers’ evaluations of their infants’ behaviors, Surgency, Negative Affectivity, Regulation,
and infants’ and mother’s behaviors at 4 months in the DVP. However, the only significant relations were Negative
Affectivity correlated with infants’ gaze at the mother (rs = −.37, p < .05), mothers’ smiles (rs = −.47, p < .01), mothers’
neutral expression (rs = −.51, p < .01) in the Live1 session, and with infants’ positive expressions in the Replay1
(rs = −.38, p < .05), and mothers’ playfulness in the Live2 (rs = −.46, p < .01). Thus, infants’ temperament appeared
not to influence either the infants’ or the mothers’ behavior except for negative effects in the earlier session of the DVP,
where both infants and mothers may have been nervous in an unfamiliar situation.

3. Discussion

3.1. Infants’ ability to discriminate non-contingent social behavior of their mothers and its relation to maternal
playfulness

We have reviewed the controversial claims for very young infants from studies with the DVP since Murray and
Trevarthen (1985) reported that 2- to 3-month-olds looked significantly less at a ‘replay’ image of their mothers
compared to the preceding ‘live’ session. Several researchers who failed to replicate this finding have pointed out that
the results obtained by Murray and Trevarthen could be explained by other factors such as increasing infant fussiness,
fatigue or memory for the mother’s immediately preceding behaviors, which it was claimed, were ‘uncontrolled’
(Bigelow & Birch, 1999; Bigelow et al., 1996; Hains & Muir, 1996; Rochat et al., 1998). On the other hand, recent
studies, Braarud and Stormark (2006), Nadel et al. (1999), Stormark and Braarud (2004) supported the initial findings
of Murray and Trevarthen (1985). The core of this dispute, however, could be because of differences in the sensitivity
of the experimental procedure and analysis, not failure to implement necessary controls. Murray and Trevarthen (1985)
recorded positive interactions before presenting the mother’s behaviors in ‘replay’, and Nadel et al. (1999) have shown
that it is essential to ensure that the mother and the infant were first engaged in active and intimate interaction to
demonstrate the double video effects. This requirement has often not been met in attempts to ‘replicate’ the procedure.
In order to confirm that young infants are capable of discriminating between mothers’ contingent and non-contingent
expressive behaviors, it is necessary not only to focus on the infant’s gaze direction, but also to measure positive
expressive and emotional aspects of their behavior. Almost all of studies reviewed omitted some infants because of
excessive fussiness. The positive aspect of ‘good’ or ‘sympathetic’ infant-mother interactions has been disregarded.
This bias is so strong that even the research team that successively replicated the original finding, and that pointed
out the importance of ‘positive interactions’ (Stormark & Braarud, 2004), in a later study, felt they could explain the
results as effects of infants’ expressions of high- or low-negative-affect (Braarud & Stormark, 2006).
The main purpose of the present study was to look for relationships between infants’ sensitivity to mothers’ contin-
gent and non-contingent expressive behaviors, and individual differences in mothers’ habitual playfulness. The results
showed, first, that our infants distinguished mothers’ non-contingent behaviors from contingent behaviors: infants’ gaze
at the mothers declined during the Replay1 and the Replay2 sessions where the communication between the infant
and the mother was out of phase. Further, carryover effects of non-contingent interaction (Bigelow, 2001) or fatigue
(Rochat et al., 1998), which has been argued could explain the fall in infants’ gaze at the mother, were not supported
in the present study. The frequency infants spent looking at their mothers increased in the ‘live’ sessions following
the replay sessions; that is, they recovered communication with the mother during successive live interactions after
expressing gaze avoidance during replay sequences.
We note that the infants in the study by Murray and Trevarthen (1985) and in other preceding studies were at least
1 month younger. The ability of our infants to discriminate between the sessions of contingent and non-contingent
expressiveness of their mothers may have been an effect of age, since it has been demonstrated that there are important
changes in infants’ interest for face-to-face interaction after 3 months as their curiosity regarding the environment
is increasing (Nadel et al., 1999; Trevarthen & Aitken, 2003). It has already been confirmed that older infants show
sensitivity to non-contingent expressions of a partner in communication (Bigelow & DeCoste, 2003; Bigelow et al.,
1996).
We submit that the most important finding in this study is that the measured ability of infants to react with avoidance
to non-contingent expressive behavior interacted with differences in mothers’ playfulness. In short, the sensitivity of
our 4-month-old infants’ to the difference between the ‘live’ and the ‘replay’ sessions was at least partly accounted
for by their mothers’ playfulness. For instance, during the ‘live’ interaction sessions, mothers’ playfulness scores
226 S. Nakano et al. / Infant Behavior & Development 30 (2007) 213–231

significantly correlated with their infants’ gaze at them, but in the ‘replay’ sessions this relationship was not found.
Further, as expected, the infants with mothers who showed a high frequency of playful behaviors (HPB) discriminated
between ‘live’ and ‘replay’ more clearly than infants with the mothers of low frequency of playful behaviors (LPB),
who showed no playful behaviors or acted playfully only once during the session. However, it is to be noted that neither
the HPB mothers nor the LPB mothers were consistent in the level of their playfulness, which changed from session
to session. This means that the relationship between an infant’s gaze at the mother and their mother’s playfulness did
not necessarily indicate an effect of her personal propensity for playful interaction, but her behavioral effectiveness in
promoting interpersonal interaction with her infant. That said, about a half of the mothers were consistently rated as
HPB or LPB throughout all the sessions, which suggests that experience of playful behaviors with their mother makes
it easier for an infants to sense whether another person’s behavior corresponds or does not correspond to their own.

3.2. Negative effects of the DVP on mothers’ communication with their infants

Another focus of the present study was that of a carryover effect of the double video procedure on mothers, which also
has been disregarded by researchers, though Murray and Trevarthen (1985, 1986) reported that negative statements and
self-centered utterances by mothers increased in the ‘replay’ condition. Stormark and Braarud (2004), who conceived
a complex replay procedure in which the mothers are presented with ‘replay’ images of their infants’ behavior in the
preceding ‘live’ session, confirmed the effect of the ‘replay’ experience of out of phase interaction by a significant
decline in the mothers’ attention to the infants during that session. However, in interpreting their observations they
considered only the gaze direction, and did not score any other relevant behaviors of mothers. As the present study
showed that our mothers watched their infants almost constantly throughout all the three ‘live’ sessions; a negative
effect of a ‘replay’ session on the mother was not found from the direction of their gaze, but from changes in the
frequency of mothers’ vocalization and emotional expression. They showed more negative expressions in the Live3
session which followed 2 ‘replay’ sessions than in the Live1. Furthermore, this negative effect on the mothers was
more marked in the case of the less playful (LPB) mothers compared to the HPB mothers. One possible explanation
for this greater negative effect on the LPB mothers is to suppose that the less playful mothers fell into a form of vicious
cycle, sensing cumulative failures at claiming their infant’s attention in both ‘live’ and ‘replay’ sessions. The infants
with the LPB mothers gazed at their mother with lower frequency than the infants with the HPB mothers throughout
the all ‘live’ interaction sessions (see Fig. 3). Their low playfulness may add to failing interaction with an unresponsive
infant during the ‘replay’ sessions. They might have been unable to do more than gaze at their infant in silence and a
neutral face in the Live3 session.
However, we should remember here that individual mothers were not consistently rated HPB or LPB through
the sessions. About a quarter of mothers were consistently classified as LPB throughout all the sessions. That is,
the explanation offered above accounts at best for only a quarter of the LPB mothers. Here, we must also take into
account that our infants very rarely vocalized or expressed emotions, and the mothers were also not highly talkative
and expressive. Only one quarter of mothers on average behaved playfully (see Table 3). For example, the fall in mean
frequency of all mothers’ smiles, from 60.6% during the Live1 to 41.8% during the Live3 session, suggests that the
change in the amount of smiling caused by the DVP is not a special characteristic of the LPB mothers, but a more
general tendency in our population. The most probable interpretation of mothers’ increasing negative expressions
through the DVP is that LPB mothers, especially, may abandon playfulness as the way to interact with their infants
because, feeling they could not make the effort to be playful, they adopted their accustomed way of interaction, namely
by becoming quiet and non-playful.

3.3. Continuity of maternal behaviors between the 3-month free-play and the 4-month DVP

We found a significant continuity between the maternal behavior named “playful companion” (PC) in the 3-month
free-play and the total mean playfulness of the three ‘live’ sessions in the 4-month DVP. The total number of the
HPC-HPB mothers and the LPC-LPB mothers combined suggested that 70% of mothers kept an unchanged manner of
interacting with their infants for 1 month in spite of the difference of the situation between free-play at home and the
DVP experiment in a lab. A similar finding was also reported by Legerstee and Varghese (2001). They hypothesized
that every parent-infant dyad develops their own interaction history, such that, while the degree of affective mirroring
varies in the normal population, the ‘private’ interaction style remains stable. They compared infants of the high affect
 S. Nakano et al. / Infant Behavior & Development 30 (2007) 213–231 227

mirroring (HAM) to infants of the low-affect mirroring (LAM) groups using the DVP. Their results supported this
relational history hypothesis by showing that the HAM infants exhibited more smiling, gazing and vocalization than
the LAM infants during ‘live’ interaction compared to when interaction was set out of phase. As mentioned above, our
infants were mostly silent and did not express clear emotions, and the mothers only occasionally talked and smiled to
their infants, though both infants and mothers maintained a high proportion of time gazing to their partner. Although
the behaviors of our sample seem to be quite different from the dyads in Legerstee and Varghese (2001), we found
that our mother-infant dyads also showed ‘affect mirroring’ since mothers’ smiles significantly related to the infant’s
positive expression in the Live2 and Live3 sessions (see Table 4). Unlike the responses of mothers in the study of
Legerstee and Varghese (2001), mothers’ smiles in our population showed no relation to the infants’ gaze at the mother,
while mothers’ playfulness significantly correlated with their infants’ gaze at them through the three ‘live’ sessions.
Interestingly even the correlations between mother’s smiles and playfulness in all the three ‘live’ sessions were not
significant.
Legerstee and Varghese (2001) measured maternal ‘affect mirroring’ according to the level of attention maintenance,
warm sensitivity, and social responsiveness the mothers displayed. In the present study, the factor analysis on the 3-
month free-play rating score for the mothers yielded a behavior category, “sensitive support” (SS) which seems similar
to the “warm sensitivity” of Legerstee and Varghese (2001). However, the influence we found of the SS on the infants’
attention to their mother and their capacity to distinguish the non-contingent behaviors of the mothers in the 4-month
DVP ‘replay’ sessions indicated that the level of the mothers’ SS did not have any influence on the infants’ change of
attention to the mother between the ‘live’ and the ‘replay’ sessions. Accordingly, it is clear that the influential factor
relating to infants’ sensitivity to social contingency was mothers’ playful companionship or playfulness, not her degree
of sensitive support or smiles.
However, an interesting finding from our analysis that carries a subtle but theoretically important implication
concerns, not the effect of loss of contingent reponses in the ‘replay’ sessions, but an effect on the Live3 session,
where mothers were likely to lose positive interaction with their infant through a feeling of discomfort with the
procedure. A significant relationship was found between mothers’ behaviors and infants’ gaze at the mother was found
in Live3 for the mothers rated high in the SS factor, not for the PC factor in behavior of the mothers, whose level of
playfulness was related to infants’ behaviors in the Live1 and Live2 sessions (see Table 6). Generally speaking, in a
stress-loaded situation, infants who may activate mothers’ sensitive and supportive interaction show more attentiveness
to the mother than infants with whose mothers share a playful interaction history with them. The most likely implication
from this finding is that there may be at least two independent interaction systems, with different functions in joyful
and stressful/insecure situations.
MacDonald (1992, 1993), from a perspective of an evolutionary theory of the human affection system, has insisted
that positive feelings of affection and warmth appear to result from a different biological system than those generating
negative emotions such as fear, distress, and anxiety. He also suggested that the human affectional system is one of
several discrete human motivational systems, with the result that human relationships may become compartmentalized
– people can have intimate, affectionate relationships with some individuals, and radically different relationships with
others. Thus, as we discussed above, if both infants and mothers felt more stress during the Live3 session than during
the previous four sessions, the finding of the relation between the SS mother and infants’ gaze at the mother can be
considered as an effective change of the mothers’ behavior to attract infants’ gaze. It is well known that maternal
sensitivity is strongly related to a parent-child attachment relationship (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978) and
the function of the attachment system is to provide security in the face of threat.
Trevarthen (2006) has proposed that motives of ‘companionship’ activate the intersubjectivity of interpersonal
relationships in cooperative, collaborative, or playful activities, and that motivation for companionship is function-
ally different from that regulating the parent-child ‘attachment’ relationship, which is activated under the threat
to solicit nurturance and care. Our finding of the shift during the Live3 session in the type of mothers’ behavior
that is effective for attracting infants’ gaze, from playful companion to sensitive support, is consistent with this
theory.

3.4. A function of playfulness and communication

The most important point to make clear here is the meaning of playfulness. Trevarthen (1988, 2001, 2006) has stressed
the importance of playful companionship for the development and mental well-being of children since he believes that
228 S. Nakano et al. / Infant Behavior & Development 30 (2007) 213–231

the purposeful regulation of expressions between parents and infants from birth, grounded in infants’ motives for
cooperative intersubjectivity or joint consciousness, is realized in joyful companionship between them (Trevarthen
& Aitken, 2001). Nakano (2006) proposed that interpersonal relations can be divided into two types; ‘vertical’ and
‘horizontal’. In developmental psychology, traditionally, parent-child relationships have been regarded as ‘vertical’ and
peer relationships as ‘horizontal’. Furman (1999), in his study of adolescents’ romantic relationships cited MacDonald
(1992, 1993), and suggested that humans are likely to seek out different individuals for close relationships depending
upon which system is most activated, such that infants turn to primary caretakers at times of distress, but at other, less
stressful times, they prefer to play with peers, particularly with known peers. This is an interesting suggestion, but
missing the very important point that a play partner may be not only a peer, but more generally any “companion”,
which means that all ages of human beings can play with even a newborn, or be an attachment figure (Nakano, 2006).
Trevarthen suggested that in infants’ interactions with companions, games of teasing and joking, such as “peek-a-boo”,
or imitations of exaggerated “funny” faces with a “playmate” are repeated to evoke laughter or admiration, and that
they reinforce relationships of ‘friendship’ (Trevarthen & Aitken, 2001).
Several authors also have drawn attention to maternal playful interactions as examples of an important and natural
channel for parents or others to communicate with infants; for example, maternal playful teasing is characteristic
of good affectionate relationships (Nakano & Kanaya, 1993), a playful parent enjoys sharing emotions (Reddy &
Trevarthen, 2004), regulated changes in mothers’ timing of play interaction elicited more positive behaviors from their
3- or 5-month-olds (Arco & McCluskey, 1981), and during playful interaction between mothers and their infants, affect
attunement appears already at 2 or 3 months of age (Jonsson et al., 2001). Now, we see that it was quite reasonable
to focus on the maternal companionship and playfulness, considering that these most probably play a large part in the
natural interaction histories of our subjects.

3.5. KOTO – play and communication

It has been proposed that developmentally a triadic interaction structure of communication consisting of two
persons and a topic outside their engagement appears around 9 months of age when the infant’s motives for a
‘secondary intersubjectivity’ relationship with a familiar companions develops (Trevarthen & Hubley, 1978). In
this view of a triangular structure in communication, however, the third component is identified as a physical
object held in the attention of both persons. Nakano (2004), introducing the Japanese term KOTO, argued that
we perceive KOTO (an event/happening/incident) when something changes unexpectedly, suddenly or discontin-
uously. In this sense, we perceive KOTO everyday, every time we notice any change even if it is very subtle.
Consequently, it is considered that this perception must be essential in our every life. At the same time, Nakano
proposed an idea that human beings even create KOTO intentionally and deliberately in “play”. For example, some-
times, mothers deliberately perturb accustomed ways of interaction with their infants introducing playful teasing
(Keltner, Capps, Kring, Young, & Heerey, 2001; Nakano & Kanaya, 1993; Reddy, 2001) trying to make the baby
laugh.
According to this idea of KOTO, it is not necessary to await the change of motivation that ushers in secondary
intersubjectivity. If KOTO is recognized as the third ‘agent’ of a triangular relationship, it even occurs in the primary
intersubjective interactions between infants and their mothers, especially in playful interactions, where we can say that
infants and their mothers already engage in communication with a shared KOTO, a ‘joke’. Arco and McCluskey (1981)
showed that when mothers changed the pace of their behavior playfully from ‘natural’ to ‘slower’ or ‘faster-than-usual’,
which implies deliberately creating KOTO, the changes significantly elicited more positive behaviors from their 3- or
5-month-old infants. Thus, it is right to say that a communicative triangle begins from very early infancy. Further,
here we must emphasize that intentionally created KOTO during an interpersonal interaction is not a simple “topic-
creator” to get other’s attention, but a “shared topic-creator”. Therefore, infants who engage in a playful interaction
with their mother must be supposed to be able to discriminate between the events of contingent and non-contingent
interaction.

3.6. Contingency detection

Gergely and Watson (1999) hypothesized that infants possess an innate “contingency detection module (CDM)”
that seeks to discover the degree of causal influence of the infant’s responses over the social environment. They propose
 S. Nakano et al. / Infant Behavior & Development 30 (2007) 213–231 229

that in the first 2–3 months, the module biases infants to explore perfect contingencies between actions and stimuli and
thus assists in the development of a sense of self and agency in the infant. Around 3 months, the module shifts to prefer
high but imperfect degrees of contingencies that are typically provided by social partners and thus infants become
oriented towards discovery of the social world. According to this theory, as our sample is 4-month-old, the greater
sensitivity to maternal playfulness we observed might be a function of the infants’ age, because playful interactions
are assumed not to be perfect contingencies. However, this CDM theory of preference for perfect contingency before
3 months was not supported by Markova and Legerstee (2006) who studied the role of contingency, imitation, and
affect sharing in interactions of 5- and 13-week-old infants and their mothers. Further, Csibra and Gergely (2006)
insisted that the sensitivity to contingent responsibility does not imply a sharing of emotional states or identification
with the source of contingency, as young infants enjoy contingent interactions even in the absence of another human
being. They are regarded to be an overstatement that mothers and infants are both motivated to be and are subjectively
aware of ‘sharing’ each other’s mental or emotional states in these interactions. Our finding of the effect of maternal
playfulness on infant’s discrimination between ‘live’ and ‘replay’ interactions also did not support this because it seems
to be reasonable to suppose that our 4-month-old infants were motivated to detect their mother’s sharing or un-sharing
playfulness in the interactions.
Keller and her co-researchers also presented evidence that parental responses generally occur within 1–2 s after the
infants’ behavior, but this temporal contingency is likely to be an independent component of parenting behavior because
promptness of maternal behavior is not associated with warmth and affection (Keller, Lohaus, Völker, Cappenberg,
& Chasiotis, 1999), and social contingencies of 3-month-old infants are assumed to be related to their competency to
detect nonsocial action-consequence contingencies (Lohaus et al., 2005). They concluded that there are two independent
components of parenting, contingency and warmth of sensitivity, and parents also react to two fundamental motivation
systems that exist in infants from birth, to detect contingencies and to expect warmth through body contact, which
might be related to the distinctions MacDonald (1992, 1993) and Trevarthen (2006) have suggested in motivations for
communication.
In the present study, significant continuity was found between the 3-month PC factor of the mother’s behavior at
home and the 4-month playfulness in mothers’ behaviors in the DVP, and their infants were more sensitive to changes in
contingencies of mother’s expressions. However, behaviors of infants with SS (sensitive support) mothers and mother’s
smiling, which have a closer meaning to warm sensitivity did not show such a relationship. This finding raises a question
whether maternal playfulness is simply a reaction to the infant’s motivation system to detect contingencies (Keller et
al., 1999; Lohaus et al., 2005). As playful interactions between parents and their infants are common from very early
infancy, we prefer to suppose that they have dismissed the developmental significance of playful interactions.
Our findings also suggested that our sample was influenced by culture. Japanese parents have been characterized as
showing more non-verbal and positive emotional expressions and physical contact when compared with the Western
parents (Caudill & Weinstein, 1969; Fogel et al., 1988; Rothbaum et al., 2000; Shand & Kosawa, 1985). Our mothers
also showed a lower frequency of vocalizations and emotional expressions, and our infants also tended to remain silent.
The relationship between physical closeness in the 3-month free-play and the increase in mothers’ silence during the
Live3 in the 4-month DVP situation also suggested that the DVP experiment was stressful, especially for mothers who
seem to strongly accept the mores of Japanese society. However, it is important to emphasize here that the cultural
influence on mothers did not affect the infants’ gaze at the mother.
Finally, Trevarthen, Aitken, Vandekerckhove, Delafield-Butt, & Nagy (2006) have argued that what infants require is
the company of a willful, aware and emotional person who is playfully ready to gently tease, or be teased, and to extend
a reaching out for fun (Reddy, 1991, 2005). Although maternal playfulness appears to be a privileged communication
channel that is presumed to facilitate the development of early intersubjectivity through interaction with their mother,
we do not know well how joy affects further child development throughout infancy and childhood (Panksepp &
Burgdorf, 2003), since a negative psychology has been predominant (Trevarthen & Aitken, 2001). Now we need a new
approach.

Acknowledgement

This research was supported in part by a grant from The JSPS Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research to the authors
(16530432). Gratitude is expressed to the infants and their mothers who participated in this research and following
colleagues for collaboration in data collection: Megumi Yamaji, Megumi Sekine, and Nozomi Inoue.
230 S. Nakano et al. / Infant Behavior & Development 30 (2007) 213–231

References

Ainsworth, M. D. S., Blehar, M. C., Waters, E., & Wall, S. (1978). Patterns of attachment: A psychological study of the strange situation. Hillsdale,
NJ: Erlbaum.
Arco, C. M., & McCluskey, K. A. (1981). “A change of pace”: An investigation of the salience of maternal temporal style in mother-infant play.
Child Development, 52, 941–949.
Beebe, B., Sorter, D., Rustin, J., & Knoblauch, S. (2003). A comparison of Meltzoff, Trevarthen, and Stern. Psychoanalytic Dialogues, 13, 777–
804.
Bigelow, A. E. (2001). Discovering self through other: Infants’ preference for social contingency. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 65, 335–346.
Bigelow, A. E., & Birch, S. A. J. (1999). The effects of contingency in previous interactions on infants’ preference for social partners. Infant Behavior
& Development, 22, 367–382.
Bigelow, A. E., & DeCoste, C. (2003). Sensitivity to social contingency from mothers and strangers in 2-, 4-, and 6-month-old infants. Infancy, 4,
111–140.
Bigelow, A. E., MacLean, B. K., & MacDonald, D. (1996). Infants’ response to live and replay interactions with self and mother. Merrill-Palmer
Quarterly, 42, 596–611.
Braarud, H. C., & Stormark, K. M. (2006). Expression of negative affect during face-to-face interaction: A double video study of young infants’
sensitivity to social contingency. Infant and Child Development, 15, 251–262.
Caudill, W., & Weinstein, H. (1969). Maternal care and infant behavior in Japan and America. Psychiatry, 12, 2–43.
Csibra, G., & Gergely, G. (2006). Social learning and social cognition: The case for pedagogy. In Y. Munakata & M. H. Johnson (Eds.), Processes
of change in brain and cognitive development. Attention and performance, XXI (pp. 249–274). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fogel, A., Toda, S., & Kawai, M. (1988). Mother infant face-to-face interaction in Japan and the United States: A laboratory comparison using
3-month-old infants. Developmental Psychology, 24, 398–406.
Furman, W. (1999). Friends and lovers: The role of peer relationships in adolescent romantic relationships. In W. A. Collins & B. Laursen (Eds.),
Relationships as developmental contexts: The 30th Minnesota Symposium on Child Development (pp. 133–154). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Gartstein, M. A., & Rothbart, M. K. (2003). Studying infant temperament via the revised infant behavior questionnaire. Infant Behavior &
Development, 26, 64–86.
Gergely, G., & Watson, J. S. (1999). Early socio-emotional development: Contingency perception and the social-biofeedback model. In P. Rochat
(Ed.), Early social cognition: Understanding others in the first months of life (pp. 101–136). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Hains, S., & Muir, D. W. (1996). Effects of stimulus contingency in infant–adult interaction. Infant Behaviour & Development, 19, 49–61.
Jonsson, C., Clinton, D. N., Fahrman, M., Mazzaglia, G., Novak, S., & Sorhus, K. (2001). How do mothers signal shared feeling-states to their
infants? An investigation of affect attunement and imitation during the first year of life. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 42, 377–381.
Kaye, K. (1982). The mental and social life of babies: How parents create persons. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Keller, H., Lohaus, A., Völker, S., Cappenberg, M., & Chasiotis, A. (1999). Temporal contingency as an independent component of parenting
behavior. Child Development, 70, 474–485.
Keltner, D., Capps, L., Kring, A. M., Young, R. C., & Heerey, E. A. (2001). Just teasing: A conceptual analysis and empirical review. Psychological
Bulletin, 127, 229–248.
Legerstee, M., & Varghese, J. (2001). The role of maternal affect mirroring on social expectancies in three-month-old infants. Child Development,
72, 1301–1313.
Lohaus, A., Keller, H., Lissmann, I., Ball, J., Borke, J., & Lamn, B. (2005). Contingency experiences of 3-month-old children and their relation to
later developmental achievements. Journal of Genetic Psychology, 166, 365–383.
MacDonald, K. B. (1992). Warmth as a developmental construct: An evolutionary analysis. Child Development, 63, 753–773.
MacDonald, K. B. (Ed.). (1993). Parent-child play: Descriptions and implications. New York: State University of New York Press.
Markova, G., & Legerstee, M. (2006). Contingency, imitation, and affect sharing: Foundations of infants’ social awareness. Developmental
Psychology, 42, 132–141.
Messer, D. J. (1994). The development of communication: From social interaction to language. Oxford, England: John Wiley & Sons.
Moore, C., & Corkum, V. (1994). Social understanding at the end of the first year of life. Developmental Review, 14, 349–372.
Murray, L., & Trevarthen, C. (1985). Emotional regulation of interaction between two month-olds and their mothers. In T. M. Field & N. A. Fox
(Eds.), Social perception in infants (pp. 177–198). NJ: Ablex.
Murray, L., & Trevarthen, C. (1986). The infant’s role in mother-infant communications. Journal of Child Language, 13, 15–29.
Nadel, J., Carchon, I., Kervella, C., Marcelli, D., & Réserbat-Plantey, D. (1999). Expectancies for social contingency in 2-month-olds. Developmental
Science, 2, 164–173.
Nakagawa, A., & Sukigara, M. (2005). How are cultural differences in the interpretation of infant behavior reflected in the Japanese Revised Infant
Behavior Questionnaire? (in Japanese). The Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology, 53, 419–503.
Nakano, S. (2004). A theory of Dekigoto: Reconsideration of developmental origin of triad interactions and understanding pretence in others. Annual
Report of Research and Clinical Center for Child Development, 26, 79–93.
Nakano, S. (2006). A theoretical exploration for the developmental model of parent-child versatile relationships: From attachment to intersubjective
companionships (in Japanese). Japanese Journal of Psychological Science, 1, 47–66.
Nakano, S., & Kanaya, Y. (1993). The effects of mothers’ teasing: Do Japanese infants read their mothers’play intention in teasing? Early Development
and Parenting, 2, 7–17.
Panksepp, J., & Burgdorf, J. (2003). “Laughing” rats and the evolutionary antecedents of human joy? Physiology and Behaviour, 79, 533–547.
Racine, T. P. (2004). Wittgenstein’s internalistic logic and children’s theories of mind. In J. I. M. Carpendale & U. Muller (Eds.), Social interaction
and the development of knowledge (pp. 257–276). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
 S. Nakano et al. / Infant Behavior & Development 30 (2007) 213–231 231

Reddy, V. (1991). Playing with others’ expectations: Teasing and mucking about in the first year. In A. Whiten (Ed.), Natural theories of mind (pp.
143–158). Oxford: Blackwell.
Reddy, V. (2001). Infant clowns: The interpersonal creation of humour in infancy. Enfance, 3, 247–256.
Reddy, V. (2005). Feeling shy and showing off: Self-conscious emotions during face-to-face interactions with live and ‘virtual’ adults. In J. Nadel
& D. Muir (Eds.), Emotional development (pp. 183–204). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Reddy, V., & Trevarthen, C. (2004). What we learn about babies from engaging with their emotions. Zero to Three, 24, 9–15.
Rochat, P., Neisser, U., & Marian, V. (1998). Are young infants sensitive to interpersonal contingency? Infant Behavior & Development, 21, 335–366.
Rothbaum, F., Pott, M., Azuma, H., Miyake, K., & Weisz, J. (2000). The development of close relationships in Japan and the United States: Paths
of symbiotic harmony and generative tension. Child Development, 71, 1121–1142.
Shand, N., & Kosawa, Y. (1985). Japanese and American behavior types at three months: Infants and infant-mother dyads. Infant Behavior &
Development, 8, 225–240.
Stern, D. N. (1985). The interpersonal world of the infant: A view from psychoanalysis and developmental psychology. New York: Basic Books.
Stern, D. N. (2004). The present moment: In psychotherapy and everyday life. New York: Norton.
Stormark, K. M., & Braarud, H. C. (2004). Infants’ sensitivity to social contingency: A ‘double video’ study of face-to-face communication between
2–4 month-olds and their mothers. Infant Behavior & Development, 27, 195–203.
Trevarthen, C. (1979). Communication and cooperation in early infancy. A description of primary intersubjectivity. In M. Bullowa (Ed.), Before
speech: The beginning of human communication (pp. 321–347). London: Cambridge University Press.
Trevarthen, C. (1988). Universal cooperative motives: How infants begin to know language and skills of culture. In G. Jahoda & I. M. Lewis (Eds.),
Acquiring culture: Ethnographic perspectives on cognitive development (pp. 37–90). London: Croom Helm.
Trevarthen, C. (1993). The self born in intersubjectivity: An infant communicating. In U. Neisser (Ed.), The perceived self: Ecological and
interpersonal sources of self-knowledge (pp. 121–173). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Trevarthen, C. (1998). The concept and foundations of infant intersubjectivity. In S. Braten (Ed.), Intersubjective communication and emotion in
early ontogeny (pp. 15–46). New York, NY, US: Cambridge University Press.
Trevarthen, C. (2001). Intrinsic motives for companionship in understanding: Their origin, development, and significance for infant mental health.
Infant Mental Health Journal, 22, 95–131.
Trevarthen, C. (2006). Stepping away from the mirror: Pride and shame in adventures of companionship. In C. S. Carter, L. Ahnert, K. E. Grossmann,
S. B. Hrdy, M. E. Lamb, S. W. Porges, & N. Sachser (Eds.), Attachment and bonding: A new synthesis, Dahlem workshop reports (pp. 55–84).
Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Trevarthen, C., & Aitken, K. J. (2001). Infant intersubjectivity: Research, theory and clinical applications. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry
and Allied Disciplines, 42, 3–48.
Trevarthen, C., & Aitken, K. J. (2003). Regulation of brain development and age-related changes in infants’ motives: The developmental function
of ‘regressive’ periods. In M. Heimann & F. Plooij (Eds.), Regression periods in human infancy (pp. 107–184). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Trevarthen, C., Aitken, K. J., Vandekerckhove, M., Delafield-Butt, J., & Nagy, E. (2006). Collaborative regulations of vitality in early childhood: Stress
in intimate relationships and postnatal psychopathology. In D. Cicchetti & D. J. Cohen (Eds.), Developmental psychopathology, developmental
neuroscience (2nd ed., 2, pp. 65–126). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Trevarthen, C., & Hubley, P. (1978). Secondary intersubjectivity: Confidence, confiding and acts of meaning in the first year. In A. Lock (Ed.),
Action gesture and symbol (pp. 183–229). London: Academic Press.
Van Egeren, L. A., Barratt, M. S., & Roach, M. A. (2001). Mother-infant responsiveness: Timing, mutual regulation, and interactional context.
Developmental Psychology, 37, 684–697.