Many theorists agree that social contact early in a child's life is important for healthy personality development. This is the most important relationship of the child development period as it is from this that the child drives its confidence in the world. A break from this relationship is experienced as highly distressing and constitutes a considerable trauma (Schaffer 1964). Through frequent social and emotional exchanges with parents the infant not only defines itself, but also acquires a particular style and orientation that some researchers believe is carried over into later life (Sroufe 1978). Therefore, the relationship between an infant and its caregiver and its development is one that has generated much interest to developmental psychologists. John Bowlby (1958, 1968) put forward a comprehensive account of attachment and believed that the infant and mother instinctively trigger each other's behaviour to form an attachment bond. Attachment can therefore be defined as ' the ability to form focused, permanent and emotionally meaningful relationships with specific others' (Butterworth & Harris 1994). In child psychology, attachm

Santrock, J.W., Bartlett, J.C. (1986) Developmental Psychology: A life-cycle Perspective. 294-299, Iowa: Wm.C.Brown.

Brodzinsky, D.M., Gormly, A.V., Ambron, S.A., (1979) Lifespan Human Development, (3rd Ed.) 123-133, New York:Holt, Rinehart and Winston.

The elements of attachment listed above become integrated into a mutual system of attachment to which both infant and mother contribute.

Findings from animal studies of behaviour influenced Bowlby ideas. Harlow and Zimmerman (1959) conducted an experiment that proved that attachment was not based on the supply of food involving infant monkeys. The infant monkeys were placed in a cage with two, wire mesh, surrogate monkey mothers. One was covered with terrycloth fabric while the other was left as it was. The infant monkeys were fed from the wire mother. The hypothesis was that if the main cause for attachment was food then one would expect that the monkeys would cling to the wire monkey which supplied milk. In actual fact, the monkeys preferred to spend their time between feedings close to or clinging to the cloth mother. They would also jump on this when frightened. Harlow's studies demonstrate the importance of physical contact for the attachment bond. Other interesting findings from this experiment were that the baby's raised from birth in the laboratory did not establish healthy social behaviours. They did not engage in typical mating behaviour, and mother monkeys proved to be neglectful and abusive towards their offspring, not cuddling or feeding their young. Harlow attributed this disruptive behaviour to the lack of social contact with other monkeys during development (Brodzinsky,Gormly & Ambron 1979).

Bowlby argued that communication between the infant and the caregiver takes the form of non verbal communication, this can be eye to eye contact, or face to face interaction. He went on to propose that the baby's smile is the essential catalyst that generates the infant-caregiver interaction. The interaction goes through positive feedback on both sides until it becomes a conversation of visually perceived gestures.

Wright (1991) outlines the progress of this progression of 'smiling' in the development of attachment behaviours:

The infant directs his attachment to human figures on an instinctual bias; all are equally likely to elicit smiling or crying because the infant is not discriminating.

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