Cyclicity and Stability in Mother-Infant Face-to-Face Interaction: A Comment on Cohn and Tronick (1988)

Cohn and Tronick (1988) found that the onset times of behavioral change in mother-infant face-toface interaction are stochastic rather than periodic. This comment offers an explanation of why thenresult replicates that of Kaye and Fogel (1980), in spite of important differences in how interactive behavior is conceptualized, coded, and treated statistically. Furthermore, it is suggested that stochastic variability in onset times has profound implications for our understanding of the process of mother-infant interaction and of the ways in which infants develop in the context of that interaction.