Reciprocal relationships between a child's engagement with faces and mother-child interaction at 8, 30, and 60 months.

Prioritized attention to faces can be viewed as an early-developing marker of social engagement. This behavior is closely linked with early interactions, but there has been little research examining the longitudinal associations between social engagement and parent-child interaction. We examined the reciprocal relations between mother-child interaction and child engagement with faces from infancy to preschool age.