The Smiling Response: A Contribution to the Ontogenesis of Social Relations

In this monograph René Spitz and Katherine Wolf study the infant's smile as a contribution to the ontogenesis of social relations. From about the third month, they report, infants smile at a human face seen from the front and in motion. They smile even at a mask that keeps the forehead, eyes and nose, but not at a face seen in profile. In the second half of the first year the smile becomes selective and is withheld from strangers. The authors read the smiling response as the infant's first active turning towards a human partner and an early step in the development of social and object relations.