Approaching an Objective System for Observation and Measurement: Infant-Parent Social Interaction Code

Abstract

The purpose of the project was to develop an objective instrument for assessing infant-parent interaction. The Infant Parent Social Interaction Code (IPSIC) provides a means for measuring four parent variables (contingent responsivity, directiveness, intrusiveness, and facilitation), four infant variables (initiation, participation, signal clarity, and intentional communicative acts), and one dyadic variable (theme continuity). One hundred fifty-nine infants ranging from birth to 31 months of age adjusted for prematurity and their mothers served as subjects for the preliminary study. Infants were experiencing normal development, environmental risk, biological risk, and established risk. Seventy-three infants with developmental ages between 18 and 36 months participated in a replication study (Cielinski, 1992). Expert opinion was solicited and assisted in the development of operational definitions of infant, parent, and dyadic interactive @@@behaviors. Preliminary and replication reliability and validity data suggest the IPSIC has potential for providing a reliable and useful profile of the infant-parent interactive process. The richness of information revealed by the IPSIC lies not in the frequency of each individual interactional construct, but in the dynamic and dyadic display of interrelated and co-occuring interactive patterns revealed by the assessment process.