Affective dimension of mother-infant picturebook reading

Eighty-two mothers with their 44-63-week-old infants were videotaped in the context of picturebook reading. The Strange Situation procedure was applied to assess infant-mother attachment security. The observations of mother and infant behavior support the view of early literacy skills as the outcome of a fundamentally social process. The study shows that the infants' responses gain significance as denotative symbols through responding at books together with the mother, and eventually as the infants' responses grow more mature, through evoking responses and pointing by the mother. These learning/instruction processes depend on the affective dimension of the infant-mother relationship. Attachment security appeared to be related to the distraction/disciplining dimension of sharing a picturebook. The discussion goes into some consequences of learning to read as a social process.