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Whatever a mother" does" with her face, voice and body provides for her infant his first and formative exposure to a human being and human communication. The flow of maternal behaviours are the very events from which the infant, through his visual, auditory and other perceptual processes, will establish a schema of the human face (Kagan, 1967); will establish schemata of human emotions as reflected in facial expressions (Spitz, 1965; Stern, 1974a); will acquire smiling and probably vocalizing as exogenous or social events (Spitz and Wolf, 1946; Rheingold et al., 1959; Emde and Harmon, 1972); will begin to form bonds of attachment (Bowlby, 1969); will acquire experience with the effect of his own social behaviours (Rheingold, 1961) and experience with self-regulation of his own states of arousal and affect (Stern, 1974b). In addition, the ongoing flow of maternal behaviour gives the infant his primary experience with the" stuff" of the process of human communication through vocal and kinesic channels. Accordingly, we must have a more detailed knowledge of the nature