ABSTRACT
Social encounters and cognitive growth are inextricably linked in infancy, as human interactions contribute to self-defining dispositions and serve to prime synaptic connections. Vital to healthy development, the parenting of infants is a reciprocal process: infants invite parenting strategies through their overt receptivity, demonstrated by affective signs of happiness, contentment and appeasement of distress; and, as infants develop, parenting changes in response to children’s changing physical and emotional needs. Infants are predisposed to sharing music with their caregivers, evidenced in their adult-like perceptual competencies for recognizing musical structures, and the remarkable proclivity of infants and parents for synchronizing the timing of their vocal interactions. Acknowledging the complex, multifaceted and diverse ways in which people care for their children, M. H. Bornstein provides a taxonomy of parenting behaviors constructed around the needs of infants and realized in terms of the reciprocal nature of parent–child interaction.
