Early roots of language in mother-infant interaction: The interplay between tonal synchrony, social engagement and physiological co-regulation.

Language is a complex learning process that develops out of spontaneous micro-processes of early co-regulation to shared understanding and symbolic meaning. In this presentation, the interplay between mutual early mother-infant vocal exchanges, shared social engagement and physiological co-regulation on a micro-level will be discussed. During the first months of life, mothers and infants seem to become involved into short periods of mutual vocalizing during which they adapt their vocal utterances alternately to one another in such a way that their pitches become tonally related (Van Puyvelde et al., 2010). These first steps to language appear to be intertwined with natural moments of early ‘social negotiation’. During tonal synchrony, mothers and infants bridge mismatched to matched social engagement (Van Puyvelde et al., 2013). Moreover, it might be possible that these roots of early language are part of a spontaneous biologically driven process. Music that corresponds to the characteristics of tonal synchronized vocal dialogues appear to evoke processes of physiological mother-infant co-regulation that are essential for later psychophysiological maturation (Van Puyvelde et al., 2014).