Maternal Referencing in Normal and Down’s Syndrome Infants

Researchers interested in the developing mother—infant relationship have observed that beginning in early infancy there is already a complex nonverbal communication system (Bowlby, 1969; Brazelton, Koslowski, & Main, 1974; Stern, 1977). We agree with Darwin (1872) that a critical aspect of this “first language of infancy” is that emotional signals are reciprocally exchanged between mother and infant.