Research on mother-infant interaction in the first year of life can contribute to conceptualizing the development of self-and object representations and the emerging organization of infant experience. Numerous authors have suggested that the early internal models of self, object, and their relationship evolve out of the patterns of interaction experienced by the infant (Sullivan, 1953; Fairbairn, 1954; Beebe and Stern, 1977; Stern, 1977, 1983, 1985; Stechler and Kaplan, 1980; Emde, 1981; Sander, 1983a, b; Demos, 1984; Main, Kaplan, and Cassidy, 1985; Beebe, 1986). Nevertheless, this proposition remains vague unless amplified by detailed descriptions of these patterns and their implications for representation. Empirical infant research is increasingly in a position to describe numerous patterns of interactive regulation between parent and infant in exquisite detail (eg, Brazelton, Kozlowski, and Main, 1974; Sander, 1977, 1983b; Stern, 1977, 1985; Kaye, 1982; Tronick, 1982; Cohn and Tronick, 1988). In addition, recent evidence for early infant presymbolic representational capacity allows us to conceptualize how patterns of interactive regulation are represented in the first year of life and how they