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Three-Month-Old Infants' Reaction to Simulated Maternal Depression
Abstract
To investigate the nature of the young infant's social competence, the effect of depressed maternal expression during face-to-face interaction was examined using an experimental analogue of maternal depression. Subjects were 12 female and 12 male infants, ages 96-110 days, and their mothers. 2 counter-balanced experimental treatments consisted of 3 min of normal maternal interaction and 3 min of stimulated depressed interaction. A control treatment consisted of 2 3-min epochs of normal maternal interaction. Interactions were videotaped and infant behavior described on a 5-sec time base that maintained order of occurrence. Infants in the depressed condition structured their behavior differently and were more negative than infants in the normal condition. Infants in the depressed condition produced higher proportions of protest, wary, and brief positive. Infants in the depressed condition cycled among protest, wary, and look away. Infants in the normal condition cycled among monitor, brief positive, and play. In addition, differences in negativity were likely to continue briefly after mothers switched from depressed to normal interaction. The data indicate that infants have a specific, appropriate, negative reaction to simulated depression in their mothers. These results question formulations based on alternate hypotheses and suggest that the infant has communicative intent in its interactions.
... Parental PTSD and depression can negatively affect their emotional availability and responsiveness to their children. Research by Cohn and Tronick (1983) has found that when mothers are emotionally unavailable, their infants exhibit more depressed behaviours (crying, wariness and looking away) and toddlers exhibit more negative behaviour including withdrawal, aggression and failing to engage in play. Staff with knowledge about the societal contexts involved in early childhood development, know that they should make the integrated setting accessible to refugee families, and provide support to the mothers and families. ...
... Visiting service linked the family to the FamilyZone Hub groups Being with Baby and Stepping Stones to assist parenting relationships, the New Age Mums and Friday playgroups to support the development of children's play and adult peer networks and the Busy Fingers craft group to provide peer support as well as practice in allowing other people to care for her child. Without intervention the family's experiences were likely to reflect the difficulties arising from two parents with depression and no employment and a baby with gastric reflux and difficulty settling.As previously detailed, there is a body of research indicating that maternal post-natal depression has a long-term adverse impact on children's attachment, cognitive development, mood and behaviour(Cohn & Tronick 1983;Carter et al 2001;Murray et al 1996;Hay et al 2003;Garber, Ciesla, McCauley, Diamond & Schloredt 2011). Ramchandani, Stein, Evans, O'Connor & the ALSPAC study team(2005)identified that depression in fathers during the post-natal period was also associated with adverse emotional and behavioural problems in children, particularly boys, aged 3-5 years. ...
... As one mother who had experienced post natal depression put it; 'Going to FamilyZone stops me from slumping into a state of depression.' One in five of the parents interviewed acknowledged they experienced depression or anxiety, and one third said they had come to FamilyZone Hub after being referred by another service.The focus on responding to mothers experiencing post-natal depression highlights the effectiveness of integrated child and family services in averting or ameliorating the adverse outcomes for children associated with maternal depression(Cohn & Tronick 1983;Carter et al 2001;Murray et al 1996;Hay et al 2003;Garber, Ciesla, McCauley, Diamond & Schloredt 2011). Emerging research points to the significance of also identifying and responding to the needs of depressed fathers, as depression impacts significantly on fathers' parenting behaviours(Davis et al 2011) and on outcomes for their children(Ramchandani et al 2005). ...
A Project of Salisbury Communities for Children
... Several behavioral systems have developed within the evolutionary process to help human infants develop their cooperative and social abilities and help them survive the hazards of the relationship with their caregivers. Social withdrawal behavior is a normal mechanism used by the infant to regulate the flow of social interaction (Brazelton et al., 1974;Cohn and Tronick, 1983). It appears to be among the first defense mechanisms infants may use in the face of relational adversity when protestation fails (Fraiberg, 1982;Guedeney et al., 2013). ...
... Feldman (2007) stressed the importance of infant sustained withdrawal behavior as a sign of dysregulation in parent-infant synchrony. The infant's reactions to interruption or to the violation of his expectations in their interactions are both obvious and durable in the "Still-Face" paradigm (Cohn and Tronick, 1983;Weinberg and Tronick, 1996). It is also why ISSWB is worth being detected at an early stage, considering its potential developmental effects on cognition, social relationships and the development of intersubjectivity as described by Trevarthen and Aitken (1999). ...
... In Bowlby's observations of young children separated from their caregivers in 1973, the gradual decline in attachment behaviors was attributed to a defensive strategy that protects the child from experiencing the unbearable mental pain caused by the absence of maternal care and the breakup of the affective bond (Ainsworth and Bowlby, 1991). On a micro-analytical level, the "still face" experiment (Cohn and Tronick, 1983) shows the same mechanism when a baby's expectations in a relationship are not met. From these observations we can understand that an infant's adaptation to a suboptimal or adverse experience is as follows: when faced with separation, loss or stress (no reaction from the caregiver, generating stress) a human baby will first signal, protest, cry and expect an answer. ...
As a result of evolution, human babies are born with outstanding abilities for human communication and cooperation. The other side of the coin is their great sensitivity to any clear and durable violation in their relationship with caregivers. Infant sustained social withdrawal behavior (ISSWB) was first described in infants who had been separated from their caregivers, as in Spitz's description of “hospitalism” and “anaclitic depression.” Later, ISSWB was pointed to as a major clinical psychological feature in failure-to-thrive infants. Fraiberg also described freezing behavior as one of the earliest modes of infant defense in the face of adverse situations threatening the infant's ability to synchronize with caregivers. We hypothesize that ISSWB behaviors are associated with poor vagal brake functioning and that an impaired social engagement system is induced by an impoverished and/or dangerous environment. Recent research using animal models highlight the neurobiology and the genetics of the social Approach/Withdrawal Behavior in infants. The present paper is therefore a plea for social withdrawal behavior to be attributed a more important role as a major psychological defensive mechanism in infancy, and for research into early development and early intervention to make more practical and theoretical use of this concept, thus decreasing the challenge of translation in social neurosciences. This work presents several situations involving developmental hazards in which assessment of ISSWB by means of the Alarm Distress Baby Scale (ADBB) has proven useful, i.e., malnutrition, effects of major maternal depression and or traumatization, assessing social withdrawal in infants with an chronic organic illness (congenital heart disease, Prader-Willi syndrome, cleft lip and/or palate Prader-Willy syndrome, Fetal alcohol syndrome) or assessing ISSWB in out of home placed infants during parental visitation. Relationships between ISSWB and other biophysiological behavioral systems are discussed, particularly links with attachment processes and Porges's polyvagal theory.
... Although age-related changes in the rates of infant positive and negative affective responses to the still-face interaction have not been reported, another line of research has found differences in the responses of infants whose mothers show high levels of depressive symptoms. First, to understand the impact that depressed parenting behavior may have on infants, researchers asked mothers to simulate depression while interacting with their infants (Cohn & Tronick, 1983;Field, 1984;Field et al., 1986). These researchers found that infants' responses to nondepressed mothers' simulated depression were similar to infants' responses to the still-face interaction. ...
... The structural organization of infants' responses refers to predictable and meaningful sequences of behaviors. For example, Cohn and Tronick (1983) used lag-sequential analysis to compare the responses of 6-month-old infants to their mothers behaving normally with their responses to their mothers simulating depression. In normal social interactions, infants cycled between positive and neutral, attentive states. ...
This study investigated (a) stability and change in infant affective responses to the still-face interaction, (b) whether maternal depression affected infant responses, and (c) whether responses to the still-face interaction predicted toddler problem behaviors. Infants (63 girls and 66 boys) of European American mothers (67 depressed and 62 nondepressed) were observed in the still-face interaction at 2, 4, and 6 months. Affect and gaze were coded on a 1-s time base. There were stable individual differences in gazing away and in rates of negative affect. Developmental change occurred only for gazing away, which increased. At 18 months, infants who failed to smile at 6 months in the still-face interaction showed more externalizing-type behaviors than did other toddlers. Infants who failed to cry at 6 months showed fewer internalizing-type behaviors. Mothers' current depressive symptoms and infants' earlier responses to the still-face interaction made independent, comparable contributions to problem behaviors at 18 months.
... Studies of both normal (Beebe & Gerstman, 1980;Fafouti-Milenkovic & Uzgiris, 1979;Kaye & Fogel, 1980) and experimentally manipulated (Cohn & Tronick, 1983;Tronick, Als, Adamson, Wise, & Brazelton, 1978) interactions support Hypothesis 2, that the change from a neutral expression to a positive expression follows the mother's becoming positive. The elicitation effects of adult positive expression have also been demonstrated in an operant paradigm (Bloom, 1975;Bloom & Esposito, 1975). ...
... Consistent with the view that the younger infant's eliciting is brought about by a reduction in the mother's rate of positive expression, one finds that many infants elicit with positive, and also negative, affective expressions when they are stressed by their mother's pervasive lack of positive affective expression. When mothers are instructed either to maintain a still face (Tronick et al., 1978) or to simulate depression (Cohn & Tronick, 1983), the infant is likely to respond with brief positive displays and also with negative affect. Clinically depressed mothers may routinely interact with extreme disengagement. ...
Three untested hypotheses are central to the theory of Brazelton and colleagues about the sequential structure of mother-infant face-to-face interaction: (1) Interactions begin with the mother’s positively eliciting her infant’s attention; (2) maternal positive expression precedes the onset of infant’s positive expression; and (3) when the infant becomes positive, the mother will remain positive until the infant again becomes disengaged. The present report tests these and related hypotheses with data from 54 mother-infant pairs—18 each at 3, 6, and 9 months of age. Mother-infant pairs were videotaped in a face-to-face paradigm for 2 min. Mother and infant behavior was coded with behavioral descriptors and a 0.25-s time-base. Log-linear modeling and related techniques were used to analyze the transitions among mother-infant dyadic states. We found support at 6 and 9 months but not at 3 months for Hypothesis 1, that periods of engagement originate with the mother’s using positive affective expressions to try to elicit her disengaged infant. We found strong support at each age for Hypotheses 2 and 3, with one exception: At 9 months, there was a significant probability of the infant’s becoming positive before the mother. The results suggest that with some revisions the hypotheses that were tested describe the structure of mother-infant face-to-face interaction from 3 to 9 months of age.
... The role of gaze aversion as a regulator of perceptual input is particularly compelling in human infants (Robson 1967), given their limitations to interact with their environment and to select or refuse visual stimulation. Cohn and Tronick (1983;1987) showed that infants' gaze aversion is part of structured cycles of engagement (eye contact, smiling, etc.) and disengagement (gaze aversion, crying, etc.) when interacting with their caregivers. Human infants exhibit gaze aversion as a reaction to the direct gaze of an emotionally unresponsive caregiver [still face experiment (Cohn and Tronick 1983;Field et al. 1986)], but also in playful interactions, for instance when playing peekaboo (Field 1981;Stifter and Moyer 1991;Reddy 2000). ...
... Cohn and Tronick (1983;1987) showed that infants' gaze aversion is part of structured cycles of engagement (eye contact, smiling, etc.) and disengagement (gaze aversion, crying, etc.) when interacting with their caregivers. Human infants exhibit gaze aversion as a reaction to the direct gaze of an emotionally unresponsive caregiver [still face experiment (Cohn and Tronick 1983;Field et al. 1986)], but also in playful interactions, for instance when playing peekaboo (Field 1981;Stifter and Moyer 1991;Reddy 2000). The notion that gaze aversion normalizes an infant's level of arousal is suggested by the fact that looking away quickly normalizes heart rate levels when they are elevated (Field 1981). ...
Gaze aversion is a behavior adopted by several mammalian and non-mammalian species in response to eye contact, and is usually interpreted as a reaction to a perceived threat. Unlike many other primate species, common marmosets ( Callithrix jacchus ) are thought to have a high tolerance for direct gaze, barely exhibiting gaze avoidance towards conspecifics and humans. Here we show that this does not hold for marmosets interacting with a familiar experimenter who suddenly establishes eye contact in a playful interaction (peekaboo). Video footage synchronously recorded from the perspective of the marmoset and the experimenter showed that the monkeys consistently alternated between eye contact and head-gaze aversion, and that these responses were often preceded by head-cocking. We hypothesize that this behavioral strategy helps marmosets to temporarily disengage from emotionally overwhelming social stimulation due to sight of another individual’s face, in order to prepare for a new round of affiliative face-to-face interactions.
... More importantly, depression reduces successful reparations of interactive emotionally negative missteps into positive interactive states. Cohn and Tronick (1983) were among the first to demonstrate that 3-month-old infants already have a distinct behavioral reaction to maternal withdrawal. In a face-to-face setting, mothers were asked to simulate depression by speaking in a flat voice, keeping their face expressionless, and limiting touch and movement toward the infant. ...
... Their interactive missteps were repaired. Overall, the infants showed distinct patterns of behavior that were specific to their mother's emotional displays (Cohn & Tronick, 1983). These findings suggest that even a 3-minute episode of simulated depression has a strong impact on the infant's emotional experience and communicative response. ...
Early exposure to adversities, such as witnessing intimate partner violence (IPV) can have long‐lasting impact on infants behavioral, emotional, and neurological development. Yet, research so far has focused on how IPV affects the well‐being of women or on the retrospective effects in older children. The first 2 years of life are characterized by rapid development of brain and behavior, making infants even more vulnerable than women or older children to the detrimental effects of exposure to violence. The goal of this review is to summarize the scientific findings on the effects of IPV on infant brain maturation and related socioemotional development. We describe effects of violence on attachment, symptoms of trauma in infants, and possible pathways involved in how IPV exposure may affect maturation of brain regions related to emotional regulation. We relate affected brain structures to development of stress reactivity (amygdala), memory (hippocampus), the processing of witnessed events itself (auditory and visual cortex), and how these consequences relate to potential subsequent psychopathology.
... Research suggests that several domains of interactive behaviour may be affected by depressed maternal mood. For example, depressed maternal affect may inhibit normal regulatory function of maternal facial expressions and emotional signals, which in turn may have an impact on infant affective behaviour (e.g., Cohn & Tronick, 1983). Studies investigating infant attachment using the Ainsworth Strange Situation (Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978) have consistently found that insecure attachment is most frequently found in children whose mothers have a history of mental illness (Field, 1984;Persson-Blennow, Naslund, McNeil, Kail, & Malmquist-Larsson, 1984;Radke-Yarrow, Cummings, Luczinski, & Chapman, 1985;Stein, Gath, Butcher, Bond, Day, & Cooper, 1991). ...
... Earlier research suggests that several domains of interactive behaviour may be effected by depressed maternal mood. For example, dampened maternal affect may inhibit the normal regulatory function of maternal facial expressions and emotional signals, which in turn, may have an impact on infant affective behaviour (Cohn & Tronick, 1983;Emde & Sorce, 1983;Fogel, 1982). In addition to potential effects on affective exchange, one would also expect depressed maternal mood to lead to understimulation of the infant and eventually to reduction in rates of infant activity (Field, 1984;Trad, 1986). ...
No single risk factor has been linked to the onset of postpartum mental illnesses. Most research has centred on postnatal depression and the most predictive risk factors appear to be marital discord, poor social support, and negative childhood representations. These risk factors are all linked to relationship issues and it may therefore be helpful to investigate the onset of postpartum mental illnesses from an attachment perspective rather than to investigate isolated risk factors. In this study the relationship between attachment style, mother-infant interaction, interpersonal relationships, and the onset of postpartum mental illness was explored in a group of 25 mothers who had been or who were currently in-patients on a mother and baby unit. Mothers were found to be less secure compared to a published normative sample. Insecure attachment style was linked to impairments in mothering abilities, single motherhood, and poor relationship with significant others. Mothers' self-rating of interaction did not correlate with observers' ratings which is in accordance with attachment theory. However, there was no evidence to suggest that insecure attachment style or diagnostic category was linked to mother-infant interactions based on observers' ratings. There was also no evidence to suggest that mothers with insecure attachment styles were more likely to be experiencing marital discord compared to mothers with a secure attachment style. Implications of the findings both for theories of the onset of postpartum mental illnesses and for treatment strategies are discussed.
... Thus, it is possible that the interaction between the mother and the infant is altered due to the infant's behavior and temperament such as negative affectivity. It has been shown that infants of depressed mothers may show disrupted interaction patterns and even generalize to interactions with strangers (Cohn and Tronick, 1983;Field et al., 1988;. Overall, these different findings suggest that the relative contributions of parental anxiety and depressive symptoms on motherinfant interaction should be studied both independently and together. ...
... Nonetheless, our results suggest an association with maternal depressive symptoms at 6 months and child's lower involvement of the adult. This is in line with previous notions that children start to adapt to the specific quality of interaction with their depressed mothers (Cohn and Tronick, 1983;Field et al., 1988Field et al., , 2009. ...
Background:
Maternal pre- and postnatal psychological distress, such as anxiety and depression, may negatively affect mother-infant interaction quality. However, more information is needed on the role of specific types and timings of pre- and postnatal distress symptoms on mother-infant interaction. Research on the role of maternal anxiety is especially scarce.
Methods:
We examined whether maternal pregnancy- related anxiety (gestational weeks 24 and 34), general anxiety or depressive symptoms (gw 14, 24 and 34 and at the infant age of 3 and 6 months) associate with the quality of mother-infant interaction when the child is eight months old. Maternal symptoms (N = 190) were measured with EPDS, SCL-90 anxiety subscale and PRAQ-R2. Mother-infant interaction was measured with the Emotional Availability Scales (EAS).
Results:
After controlling for background factors, general anxiety at the 3rd pregnancy trimester was associated with higher maternal intrusiveness in EAS. Depressive symptoms at 6 months postpartum associated with lower maternal structuring behavior and with the child's lower involvement of the mother.
Limitations:
A very small number of mothers with severe symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Conclusions:
Prenatal anxiety and postnatal depressive symptoms may each have unique effects on the different areas of mother-infant interaction, suggesting the need to develop more targeted interventions for mothers with different symptom profiles and timings. Prenatally anxious mothers could potentially benefit from early interventions decreasing stress and anxiety symptoms and specifically promoting their ability to read infant cues appropriately. Infants of postnatally depressed mothers may need interventions where both members of the dyad receive help.
... Behaviors such as anger/poke, disengage, elicit, play, originally described by the MPP, have been aggregated into macrocategories such as "disengaged, " "positive, " "mixed" and used to classify behavioral patterns of mothers (Cohn et al., 1986(Cohn et al., , 1990Field et al., 1990;Campbell et al., 1995). Intrusive behaviors were characterized by low levels of play and high levels of anger (Cohn et al., 1986(Cohn et al., , 1990, and lower instances of mutual regulation, particularly in dyads in which the mother had postpartum depression (Cohn and Tronick, 1983;Murray et al., 1996;Reck et al., 2004Reck et al., , 2011Beebe et al., 2008;Hatzinikolaou and Murray, 2010). Other studies have attributed intrusive character to single maternal behaviors occurring in a given time unit, such as rough handling of the infant, poking, pulling, tickling, interfering manipulation and using a loud tone of voice (Cohn et al., 1990;Malphurs et al., 1996;Diego et al., 2002), and/or an angry tone of voice (Tronick and Weinberg, 1997) and intrusive touch (Beebe et al., 2008). ...
... In comparison to healthy controls, mothers with postpartum depression were found more prone to adopt either withdrawing or intrusive behaviors in the interaction with their infants (Reck et al., 2004;Beebe et al., 2008), presenting increased over-stimulation, negative and aggressive actions (e.g., irritation, anger, rough handling) disrupting affective synchrony and interactional coordination (Cohn and Tronick, 1983;Cohn et al., 1986Cohn et al., , 1990Field et al., 1990;Beebe et al., 2008). Such maternal conducts were found to match a corresponding tendency by the infant toward withdrawal, higher stress arousal and negative affect (Cohn et al., 1986(Cohn et al., , 1990Field et al., 1988;Diego et al., 2002;Hatzinikolaou and Murray, 2010). ...
To date, studies investigating maternal postpartum depression (PPD) have mainly focused on identifying failures in interactions of postpartum depressed mothers and their infants, often attributed to single dysfunctional maternal behaviors. Intrusiveness has been identified as a dysfunctional behavior characterizing mothers suffering from PPD. However, this research does not consider the co-constructed and sequential nature of social interactions, in which single behaviors cannot be conceived as isolated or disconnected units. The aim of the work presented in this paper was to explore the interactional dynamics underlying maternal behaviors previously identified as intrusive by mainstream literature on postpartum depression. Through a conversation analytical approach, we analyzed filmed interactions between mothers with and without postpartum depression and their 3-months-old infants. The analyses of 4 selected episodes illustrate similar dyadic activities, yet presenting different levels of mutuality and affective attunement. Results showed two normative features of social interactions that contributed to the different quality in the mutual adjustment of the partners: interactional rhythm and preliminaries. Interactional rhythm refers to the structuring of infants' spontaneous activity into a turn sequence, whereas preliminaries consist of verbal or nonverbal moves that anticipate following action. As evident from our analytical observations, what seems to be hindering the mutual coordination (previously labeled as “intrusive”) is not based on specific individual behaviors but on the absence or violation of such interactional norms. Adopting an interactive and dynamical framework, we shifted the focus from maternal behaviors considered as dysfunctional to observing the unfolding of interactional aspects contributing to better or poorer sequential structuring. We argue that these aspects shape the possibilities for the infant's participation. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and methodological implications of adopting a conversation analytical approach for a better understanding of the relational dynamics related to clinical and non-clinical interactions.
... A depressed adverse emotional parenting climate disrupts the dynamic interaction of the parent-infant dyad and limits joint positive experiences of matching states and, more importantly, successful reparations. Cohn and Tronick [18] were among the first to demonstrate that 3-month-old infants already have a distinct behavioral reaction to maternal withdrawal. In a face-to-face setting, mothers were asked to simulate depression by speaking in a flat voice, keeping their face expressionless, and limiting touch and movement toward the infant. ...
... In contrast, when these same mothers resumed their typical natural interaction, their infant exhibited a coherent cycle of positive affect, social monitoring, and play. Overall, the infants showed distinct patterns of behavior that were specific to their mother's emotional displays [18]. These findings suggest that even a 3-min episode of simulated depression has a strong impact on the infant's emotional experience and communicative response in the moment. ...
Experiencing depressive symptoms in the postpartum period is common among new parents. When symptoms are severe or chronic, they can affect parents’ daily functioning, parenting practices, and interactions with their infants. In turn, impaired parent-infant interactions contribute to adverse developmental outcomes for infants of depressed parents. We discuss potential underlying mechanisms that link maternal and paternal depression to adverse consequences for infants’ development. Using the mutual regulation model as a theoretical frame, we review central characteristics of the early parent-infant interaction in the context of parental depression and discuss how psychopathology and child gender differences may alter these interactions and increase infant vulnerability. Finally, we consider environmental and biological factors that contribute to individual risk and resilience beyond the parent-infant interaction.
... One line of research that can inform our understanding of how mismatched modalities of formal communication in parent-child dyads may influence interaction is something called the Still Face Paradigm. In the Still Face Paradigm, the mother interacts with her infant normally, but at specific time intervals indicated by the researcher, the mother maintains a stoic, unemotive face and continues to do so regardless of the child's behavior (Cohn & Tronick, 1983). Although originally developed as a tool to mimic the decreased affect displayed by mothers with depression (Cohn & Tronick, 1983), researchers have begun using this paradigm to probe how parent interaction influences child emotions and cognition (Mesman, van IJzendoorn, & Bakermans-Kranenburg, 2009). ...
... In the Still Face Paradigm, the mother interacts with her infant normally, but at specific time intervals indicated by the researcher, the mother maintains a stoic, unemotive face and continues to do so regardless of the child's behavior (Cohn & Tronick, 1983). Although originally developed as a tool to mimic the decreased affect displayed by mothers with depression (Cohn & Tronick, 1983), researchers have begun using this paradigm to probe how parent interaction influences child emotions and cognition (Mesman, van IJzendoorn, & Bakermans-Kranenburg, 2009). In the case of deaf and hard-of-hearing children, it has revealed that hearing mothers of these children use the vocal modality (that is, speech) to re-engage their infants at the completion of the Still Face Paradigm and do so more than deaf mothers in deaf parent-deaf child dyads (Koester, Karkowski, & Traci, 1998), despite the children not having access to audition. ...
... « La parentalité basée sur l'acceptation, le soutien, l'affection et la compréhension semble avoir un impact optimal sur la régulation des émotions des enfants » (Otterpohl et al., 2012). Par exemple, la sensibilité aux signaux émotionnels de l'enfant favorise chez ce dernier des comportements autorégulateurs (e.g., Cohn & Tronick, 1983;Gable & Isabella, 1992). Les pratiques parentales négatives (hostilité, contrôle psychologique, contrôle négatif, manque de sensibilité) sont associées à une faible RE (Morris et al., 2007), impliquant notamment une mauvaise compréhension des affects négatifs par les enfants (Rogosch, Cicchetti, & Aber, 1995), de l'impulsivité et un manque de maîtrise de soi (Erickson, Egeland, & Pianta, 1989). ...
... These alterations consistently produce immediate and long-lasting operant and/or emotional changes in the infant's behavior (see Fagen & Prigot, 1993, for a detailed review). Schedule changes have also been used by other researchers interested in studying how infants react to violations of learned expectancies (e.g., Alessandri, Sullivan, & Lewis, 1990;Cohn & Tronick, 1983). ...
... Second, children might develop ruminative, passive styles because they have not been taught a repertoire of more adaptive strategies for handling negative affect, such as benign distraction or appropriate problem solving (cf. Baumrind, 1977;Cohn & Tronick, 1983;Kopp, 1982;Patterson, 1982;Shure & Spivack, 1978). In the study of depressed and nondepressed mothers and their children, mothers' styles of responding to their children when they were frustrated predicted children's problemsolving and affect-regulation skills (Nolen-Hoeksema, Wolfson, et al., 1990). ...
I propose that the ways people respond to their own symptoms of depression influence the duration of these symptoms. People who engage in ruminative responses to depression, focusing on their symptoms and the possible causes and consequences of their symptoms, will show longer depressions than people who take action to distract themselves from their symptoms. Ruminative responses prolong depression because they allow the depressed mood to negatively bias thinking and interfere with instrumental behavior and problem-solving. Laboratory and field studies directly testing this theory have supported its predictions. I discuss how response styles can explain the greater likelihood of depression in women than men. Then I intergrate this response styles theory with studies of coping with discrete events. The response styles theory is compared to other theories of the duration of depression. Finally, I suggest what may help a depressed person to stop engaging in ruminative responses and how response styles for depression may develop.
... Drawing on the provocative results of analogue studies with infants (e.g., Cohn & Tronick, 1983;Zekoski, O'Hara, & Wills, 1987), several investigators have compared the mother-infant interactions of women reporting elevated levels of depressive symptoms with those of nonsymptomatic women. Livingood, Daen, and Smith (1983), for example, found that symptomatic women gazed less often at their newborn infants and showed less positive regard for them during a feeding session. ...
This study examined the association of postpartum depression with specific infant characteristics. Twenty-five diagnosed depressed and 25 nondepressed mothers and their 2-month-old infants participated in the study. The mothers completed measures of infant temperament and difficulty associated with infant care, and the infants were assessed using the Bayley Scales of Infant Development. Group comparisons indicated that, compared with the infants of the nondepressed mothers, the infants of the depressed women were less competent cognitively and expressed more negative emotions during the testing. The depressed mothers perceived their infants as more difficult to care for and more bothersome than did the nondepressed mothers, but did not attribute these difficulties to the temperament of their infants. These findings suggest that postpartum depression is associated with an identifiable pattern of infant behavior that may exacerbate depressed women's mood.
... A similar case appears to be emerging for another group of atypical infants, infants of depressed mothers. Researchers (Cohn, Matias, Tronick, Connell, & Lyons-Ruth, 1986;Cohn & Tronick, 1983;Field, 1984;Field et al., 1985) have reported disturbed interactions between infants and their depressed mothers, including less activity and responsivity and flat affect, as if the infants were mimicking the inactive, unresponsive, and flat behavior of their mothers. ...
This summary of the special series critically evaluates what we know about the relations between early interaction, the “strange situation,” and later social behavior in normal and atypical infants including premature infants, abused or neglected infants, and the infants of depressed mothers. Equivocal relations between early interaction behaviors and later attachment classifications are attributed to the limitations of the strange-situation paradigm, a paradigm that has rapidly become the accepted standard for assessing attachment. A more complex paradigm that would tap behavior in more ecologically meaningful situations, both stressful and nonstressful, may provide more insight into the functional significance of attachment.
... « La parentalité basée sur l'acceptation, le soutien, l'affection et la compréhension semble avoir un impact optimal sur la régulation des émotions des enfants » (Otterpohl et al., 2012). Par exemple, la sensibilité aux signaux émotionnels de l'enfant favorise chez ce dernier des comportements autorégulateurs (e.g., Cohn & Tronick, 1983;Gable & Isabella, 1992). Les pratiques parentales négatives (hostilité, contrôle psychologique, contrôle négatif, manque de sensibilité) sont associées à une faible RE (Morris et al., 2007), impliquant notamment une mauvaise compréhension des affects négatifs par les enfants (Rogosch, Cicchetti, & Aber, 1995), de l'impulsivité et un manque de maîtrise de soi (Erickson, Egeland, & Pianta, 1989). ...
... Studies have found that depressive symptoms negatively impact the quality of maternal expression, speech patterns, functional content, and interpersonal communication as well as nonverbal communicative behaviors such as gaze and touch (Herrera et al., 2004;Albright & Tamis-LeMonda, 2002). This depressed behavior negatively influences the early, reciprocal interactions of mothers and infants beginning in the first few months of life, contributing to a cycle of ineffective bidirectional communication (Cohn & Tronick, 1983;Field et al., 1988). This is particularly consequential because qualitative aspects of infant-directed speech (e.g., short and simplified utterances, higher and variable pitches, exaggerated articulation and prosody, repetition, and responsiveness) are important for early language acquisition (Soderstrom, 2007;Golinkoff et al., 2015), placing children of depressed mothers at a developmental disadvantage. ...
Objectives
Maternal depressive symptoms are an important risk factor for adverse child outcomes, especially in the perinatal period. We studied whether introducing finger puppets in the primary care setting to promote infant language improves maternal postpartum depressive symptoms.Methods
An intervention cohort was enrolled and given a finger puppet at the 2-month infant well visit. Two usual care cohorts were enrolled at either the 6- or 12-month well visit as part of a larger study. Depressive symptoms were assessed using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), which was administered by clinic providers as part of routine screening done at both the 2- and 4-month well visits. EPDS scores were obtained retrospectively through the electronic medical record.ResultsIncluded mothers (n = 127) completed the EPDS at 2 and 4 months postpartum. Most children (83%) were on government-sponsored insurance. Mean EPDS scores and scores classified as possible depression (≥ 10) did not differ between cohorts. However, the change in scores between visits was significantly different for intervention (n = 46) compared to usual care (n = 81) participants (-1.1 vs. +0.4, p = 0.001). More intervention scores improved (n = 17, 37%) compared to usual care (n = 14, 17%), while more usual care scores worsened (n = 28, 35%) compared to intervention (n = 6, 13%) (p = 0.008).Conclusion
Finger puppets introduced during infant primary care visits to support language-rich maternal-infant interactions may provide a simple, low-cost way to improve maternal postpartum depressive symptoms. Larger studies with more diverse populations are needed to determine if effects are replicable, generalizable, and translate into better clinical outcomes.
... The Still-Face Experiment (SFE) [122] is a video-taped observational task used to assess mother-infant interaction. The SFE has been used in a wide range of development studies to assess infant affect, emotional regulation and maternal sensitivity within infant-mother dyads [123][124][125][126]. The still-face video footage will be coded on a second-by-second basis using the Infant and Caregiver Gaze by Affect/Engagement Phases (ICEP). ...
... Suddenly unavailable, leaving the child alone. May be due to negligence or a family crisis such as parental illness including mental illness, e.g., depression (Cohn and Tronick, 1983), or from illness in the child resulting in hospitalization or some other form of separation. ...
This article is situated within the framework of schema therapy and offers a comprehensive and clinically useful list of schema modes that have been identified as being relevant to conceptualizing complex psychological problems, such as those posed by personality disorders, and, in particular, the way that those problems are perpetuated. Drawing on the schema therapy literature, as well as other literature including that of cognitive behavior therapy and metacognitive therapy, over eighty modes are identified altogether, categorized under the widely accepted broad headings of Healthy Adult, Child modes, Parent modes and coping modes which are, in turn, divided into Surrender, Detached/Avoidant, and Overcompensator. An additional category is included: Repetitive Unproductive Thinking. This draws attention to the recognition by metacognitive therapists that such covert behaviors play a significant role in amplifying distress and perpetuating a range of psychological problems and symptoms. In addition to the modes themselves, several concepts are defined that are directly relevant to working with modes in practice. These include: default modes, blended modes, mode suites and mode sequences. Attention is also drawn to the way in which Child modes may be hidden “backstage” behind coping modes, and to the dyadic relationship between Child modes and Parent modes. Also relevant to practice are: (1) the recognition that Critic voices may have different sources and this has implications for treatment, (2) the concept of complex modes in which several submodes work together, and (3) the fact that in imagery work and image of a child may not represent a Vulnerable Child, but a Coping Child. The modes and mode processes described are directly relevant to clinical practice and, in addition to being grounded in the literature, have grown out of and proved to be of practical use in conceptualizing my own cases, and in supervising the cases of other clinicians working within the schema therapy framework.
... This criterion is relevant to both the parent and the child as initiator too, a view that is consistent with other domains of research, such as that employing the Still-Face Paradigm (Cohn & Tronick, 1983), in which infants demonstrate themselves to be sensitive to relevant social cues in a triadic interaction. Even very young infants (between 3 and 9 months of age) will spend a significant amount of time looking toward an adult when the adult coordinates both her affect and attention between the infant and an object, as opposed to simply coordinating affect or attention only with the infant (Striano & Stahl, 2005). ...
Parent-child interactions support the development of a wide range of socio-cognitive abilities in young children. As infants become increasingly mobile, the nature of these interactions change from person-oriented to object-oriented, with the latter relying on children's emerging ability to engage in joint attention. Joint attention is acknowledged to be a foundational ability in early child development, broadly speaking, yet its operationalization has varied substantially over the course of several decades of developmental research devoted to its characterization. Here, we outline two broad research perspectives-social and associative accounts-on what constitutes joint attention. Differences center on the criteria for what qualifies as joint attention and regarding the hypothesized developmental mechanisms that underlie the ability. After providing a theoretical overview, we introduce a joint attention coding scheme that we have developed iteratively based on careful reading of the literature and our own data coding experiences. This coding scheme provides objective guidelines for characterizing mulitmodal parent-child interactions. The need for such guidelines is acute given the widespread use of this and other developmental measures to assess atypically developing populations. We conclude with a call for open discussion about the need for researchers to include a clear description of what qualifies as joint attention in publications pertaining to joint attention, as well as details about their coding. We provide instructions for using our coding scheme in the service of starting such a discussion.
... In the Still-Face paradigm, the mother initially interacts with her infant normally. Then, at specific time intervals indicated by the researcher, the mother maintains a stoic, unemotive face regardless of the child's behavior (Cohn & Tronick, 1983). Although originally developed as a tool to mimic the decreased affect displayed by mothers with depression, researchers have begun using this paradigm to probe other aspects of early development (Mesman, van IJzendoorn, & Barkermans-Kranenburg, 2009). ...
Parent-child dyads in which the child is deaf but the parent is hearing present a unique opportunity to examine parents’ use of non-auditory cues, particularly vision and touch, to establish communicative intent. This study examines the multimodal communication patterns of hearing parents during a free play task with their hearing (N=9) or deaf (N=9) children. Specifically, we coded parents’ use of multimodal cues in the service of establishing joint attention with their children. Dyad types were compared for overall use of multimodal – auditory, visual, and tactile – attention-establishing cues, and for the overall number of successful and failed bids by a parent for a child’s attention. The relationship between multimodal behaviors on the part of the parent were tracked for whether they resulted in successful or failed initiation of joint attention. We focus our interpretation of the results on how hearing parents differentially accommodate their hearing and deaf children to engage them in joint attention. Findings can inform the development of recommendations for hearing parents of deaf children who are candidates for cochlear implantation regarding communication strategies to use prior to a child’s implantation. Moreover, these findings expand our understanding of how joint attention is established between parents and their preverbal children, regardless of children’s hearing status.
... Por otro lado, Cohn y Tronick (1983) investigaron el efecto de la expresión depresiva materna durante la interacción cara a cara. Para ello examinaron 24 díadas de madres de clase media con estudios superiores y hablantes de inglés. ...
... The Still-Face Experiment (SFE) [122] is a video-taped observational task used to assess mother-infant interaction. The SFE has been used in a wide range of development studies to assess infant affect, emotional regulation and maternal sensitivity within infant-mother dyads [123][124][125][126]. The still-face video footage will be coded on a second-by-second basis using the Infant and Caregiver Gaze by Affect/Engagement Phases (ICEP). ...
Background:
Untreated antenatal depression and anxiety can be associated with short and long term health impacts on the pregnant woman, her infant and the rest of the family. Alternative interventions to those currently available are needed. This clinical trial aims to investigate the efficacy and safety of a broad-spectrum multinutrient formula as a treatment for symptoms of depression and anxiety in pregnant women and to determine the impact supplementation has on the general health and development of the infant.
Methods:
This randomised, controlled trial will be conducted in Canterbury, New Zealand between April 2017 and June 2022. One hundred and twenty women aged over 16 years, between 12 and 24 weeks gestation and who score ≥ 13 on the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) will be randomly assigned to take the intervention (n = 60) or an active control formula containing iodine and riboflavin (n = 60) for 12 weeks. After 12 weeks, participants can enter an open-label phase until the birth of their infant and naturalistically followed for the first 12 months postpartum. Infants will be followed until 12 months of age. Randomisation will be computer-generated, with allocation concealment by opaque sequentially numbered envelopes. Participants and the research team including data analysts will be blinded to group assignment. The EPDS and the Clinical Global Impressions Scale of Improvement (CGI-I) will be the maternal primary outcome measures of this study and will assess the incidence of depression and anxiety and the improvement of symptomatology respectively. Generalized linear mixed effects regression models will analyse statistical differences between the multinutrient and active control group on an intent-to-treat basis. A minimum of a three-point difference in EPDS scores between the groups will identify clinical significance. Pregnancy outcomes, adverse events and side effects will also be monitored and reported.
Discussion:
Should the multinutrient formula be shown to be beneficial for both the mother and the infant, then an alternative treatment option that may also improve the biopsychosocial development of their infants can be provided for pregnant women experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety.
Trial registration:
Trial ID: ACTRN12617000354381 ; prospectively registered at Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry on 08/03/2017.
... Trevaerthen (1979) proposed that infants possess an innate capacity of intersubjectivity, or an ability both to express and to directly apprehend in others rudimentary intentions and affects. Experimental studies of infant responses to contrived episodes of disrupted or perturbed maternal behaviour have established that infants are remarkably sensitive to the quality of adult communication with them and respond in distinctive forms to these, such as distress and withdrawal in response to a blank face in the mother (Cohn and Tronick, 1983;Murray & Trevarthen, 1985;Tronick & Cohn, 1989). Thus, when infants are faced with a particular type of caregiving and learn from these experiences, they are able to tailor their own behaviour accordingly, selecting behaviour that is expected to elicit known responses from the caregivers (Field, 1994). ...
Past research has demonstrated the effects of adverse rearing environments on children's emotion regulation but in most studies it has been difficult to distinguish the effects of early experiences from continuity in risk exposure. This study aimed to disentangle emotion regulation processes following severe early deprivation and to examine their associations with children's previous attachment disturbances and concurrent peer relationships. The participants, 96 children adopted from Romanian institutions between the ages of 0-4 years and 24 non-deprived UK children adopted in early infancy, were assessed at age 11 years. Information on emotion regulation was derived from observations of children's social interaction during an interview situation. Data on children's peer relationships were gathered using standardised assessments. Previous data on children's attachment disturbances at age 6 years were also available. Factor analysis revealed four dimensions of maladaptive emotion regulation. ANOVA and correlational analyses indicated a significant association between duration of deprivation and maladaptive patterns of emotion regulation. In addition, attachment disturbances partially mediated the association between early deprivation and emotion regulation. Furthermore, emotion regulation fully mediated the association between early deprivation and social competence with peers. The discussion focuses on the critical role of early experiences in the development of emotion regulation and its impact on subsequent adaptation, including attachment disturbances and peer relationships. Possible mechanisms underlying children's interpersonal difficulties are suggested in the light of existing literature and theoretical perspectives. Some of the study's limitations and its' empirical and clinical implications are also discussed.
... Importantly, even brief manipulations involving adults' unresponsive behavior, such as the still-face paradigm simulating maternal depression, lead to significant infants' distress (e.g. Cohn and Tronick, 1983;Field et al., 1986;Gusella et al., 1988). The consequences of pacifier use are much less dramatic but may still lead to a misregulation of early emotion exchanges by decreasing both adult-and infant-elicited interaction behaviors, thus making free play less enjoyable and rewarding. ...
Few things affect us as much as facial expressions, as they inform us about others’ feelings and intentions, thereby influencing our own emotions and behaviors. A substantial body of literature links the critical abilities of recognizing and understanding emotion displays with facial mimicry, a sensorimotor process involving rapid imitation of perceived expressions. For example, blocking or altering facial mimicry in adults leads to disruptions in judgments in emotion recognition or emotional language processing. The present review focuses on pacifier use in infancy, a common practice that has the potential to interfere with infants’ facial movements in ways identical to laboratory paradigms designed to block facial mimicry. Despite this similarity and the widespread use of infant soothers, little is known about their long-term effects. Here we review studies exploring the psychological correlates and implications of pacifier use. In particular, we discuss how soothers may interfere with the development of social skills in infants and present evidence linking pacifier use with disrupted adults’ mimicry of facial expressions displayed by infants. Other preliminary findings reveal negative correlations between the use of soothers and children’s spontaneous facial mimicry as well as emotional competence of young adults. Such studies, although correlational, suggest that this widespread parenting practice may affect the development of social skills by influencing emotional coordination. We discuss the implications of these findings and propose avenues for future research that can provide insights into the role of embodied processes in the development of emotional competence and adult functioning.
... Researchers following in this tradition have examined organizational state both as a behavioral response and as a platform for other behaviors. Infant arousal as indexed by smiling, vocalization, and physiological measures has been shown to vary contingently with maternal response, both positively, as high levels of interaction lead to increased infant arousal (Symons & Moran, 1987), and negatively, in that deliberate simulation of non-responsive maternal behavior has been shown to result in disrupted infant arousal and affect (Cohen & Tronick, 1983). In the cognitive domain, the infant's disposition to attend to information and to process experience is dependent on momentary state (Aslin & Fiser, 2005;Rothbart, Ziaie, O'Boyle, Eisenberg, & Fabes, 1992). ...
... The mother's behaviour has been explored for its impact on the quality of early intersubjective relationships. In particular, research on clinical populations, and especially on postpartum depressed mothers, has focused extensively on maternal intrusiveness (Cohn & Tronick, 1983), broadly described as a maternal conduct which interferes with the infants' participation in dyadic interactions. ...
Cooperation and joint actions are often investigated in terms of how individuals explicitly coordinate their plans and intentions to achieve a shared goal. However, goals may also be achieved without prior arrangements, when, for instance, an individual takes part in someone else’s action without an explicit agreement, helping that action to be performed. Participating in social interaction may be considered as a basic form of cooperation that does not always require verbal communication or the ability to predict the other’s intentions. Rather, it is based on daily experiences of interacting and coordinating with others in many, different situations.
Framed in this way, cooperative participation can be explored even in those who do not possess high mental abilities, such as infants. Indeed, infants seem to have a natural motive to engage in social interactions (Trevarthen, 1979 ). How does this participation develop from early forms of social interactions in infancy, to more complex types of interactions later on? Are there early forms of interactive participation in infancy that can be described as supportive for the caregivers’ action? The aim of the present Ph.D. work is to explore the way in which infants participate in daily routines, through the observation of 3-months-old infants’ behaviour in familiar interactions and their response to violations of these routines.
... In addition to parental limiting longstanding illness, maternal depression has been found to have damaging effects on child development, principally cognitive and emotional wellbeing (Ashman et al., 2008, Lovejoy et al., 2000, Kiernan and Huerta, 2008 and to a lesser extent obesity (Ramasubramanian et al., 2013). From very early in life, studies have found children of depressed mothers are less responsive to facial and vocal expressions, are fussier, more inactive and have raised stress hormones (Cohn andTronick, 1983, Brennan et al., 2008). ...
There are a lack of studies which jointly examine psychosocial stressors in the home environment, socioemotional difficulties and obesity during childhood. This study examined two potential pathways of growing up in households characterised by psychosocial stressors on children’s mental wellbeing and obesity across the first decade of life. First, the associations between psychosocial stressors, socioemotional difficulties and obesity were explored. Then, the patterning of socioemotional difficulties and BMI over time was examined. Using the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS), cross-sectional and longitudinal logistic regression analysis was employed to analyse the associations for four family level psychosocial stressors (parental limiting longstanding illness, parental relationship change, parent-child conflict and maternal depression) with socioemotional difficulties and obesity at ages 3, 5, 7, and 11 years. All psychosocial stressors were associated with increased odds of socioemotional difficulties, but associations between psychosocial stressors and obesity were found only for stressors pertaining to parental health (parental limiting longstanding illness; parental relationship change; maternal depression; and parent-child conflict). A significant interaction was found for parent-child conflict by parental relationship status, with children in single-parent families, compared to two-parent families, more likely to have socioemotional difficulties after exposure to parent-child conflict. Finally, cross-lagged structural equation modelling was used to analyse the pathways between socioemotional difficulties and body-mass index (BMI) at ages 3, 5, 7, and 11 years, accounting for maternal and family characteristics and psychosocial stressors. For girls only, socioemotional difficulties and BMI were positively correlated in both directions from ages 7 to 11 years. Preadolescent girls with more socioemotional difficulties were more likely to have higher BMI’s and similarly, girls with higher BMI’s were more likely to have socioemotional difficulties. Policies tackling child health in the UK should take a comprehensive approach to understand the mechanisms which lead to socioemotional difficulties and childhood obesity.
... Indeed, the findings of several cortical activation EEG studies of infants between 1 and 15 months old of mothers with depression indicate greater relative right frontal cortical activation, which mirror EEG findings among mothers and adults with major depression Dawson, Klinger, Panagiotides, Hill, & Spieker, 1992;Diego et al., 2002;Field et al., 2001;Field et al., 2004;Jones, Field, & Almeida, 2009). In groundbreaking "still face" experiments, Tronick and colleagues showed that when mothers deliberately shut down their emotional connection and simulated withdrawn behaviors to their infants, the infants became alarmed and responded through a series of increasingly distressed behaviors to try to re-engage (Cohn & Tronick, 1983). These engagement behaviors initially included reaching out to their mothers, and when there was no response, progressed to protesting, turning away, and eventually emotional "meltdown." ...
Postpartum depression (PPD) and other perinatal mental health disorders have profound adverse effects on maternal-infant interaction and child health. However, standard psychiatric treatment does not necessarily improve the quality of mother-infant interaction. The purpose of this article is to describe the evidence-based CARE intervention and its translation to practice as Mother-Baby Interaction (MBI) Therapy to promote infant outcomes by supporting mothers’ sensitive, responsive, and contingent interactions with their infants. Two vignettes illustrate MBI. We advocate that MBI needs to be a requisite adjunct treatment for PPD, and other perinatal mental health disorders, to promote maternal functioning, and positive long-term infant health outcomes.
... These speech patterns parallel previous relationships between depression and anxiety and other physiological metrics (e.g., behavior, cognition, cortisol, electromyography). For instance, behaviorally, one study has mothers speak in a low, monotone voice to mimic depression (known for flat affect) to their infants [51], and cognitively, depression and anxiety are known for repetitive thinking or rumination [52], which may be reflected in their speech patterns. Finally, children with depression and anxiety have been shown to have heightened response to stress (cortisol [21]) and startle (electromyography [53]). ...
Childhood anxiety and depression often go undiagnosed. If left untreated these conditions, collectively known as internalizing disorders, are associated with long-term negative outcomes including substance abuse and increased risk for suicide. This paper presents a new approach for identifying young children with internalizing disorders using a 3-minute speech task. We show that machine learning analysis of audio data from the task can be used to identify children with an internalizing disorder with 80% accuracy (54% sensitivity, 93% specificity). The speech features most discriminative of internalizing disorder are analyzed in detail, showing that affected children exhibit especially low-pitch voices, with repeatable speech inflections and content, and high-pitched response to surprising stimuli relative to controls. This new tool is shown to outperform clinical thresholds on parent-reported child symptoms, which identify children with an internalizing disorder with lower accuracy (67-77 vs. 80%), and similar specificity (85-100 vs. 93%), and sensitivity (0-58 vs. 54%) in this sample. These results point toward the future use of this approach for screening children for internalizing disorders so that interventions can be deployed when they have the highest chance for long-term success.
... According to Mehrabian [87], 93% of all human communication is "nonverbal" in nature, and facial expressions comprise 55% of the communicating message. It is evident that there are certain social situations [36,56] and the emotion-eliciting medium [18] that makes a face expressive. This motivates the researchers to implement automatic facial expression recognition methods from real-time images or videos. ...
Several research methodologies and human face image databases have been developed based on deliberately produced facial expressions of prototypical emotions. However, real-time and spontaneous facial expression recognition cannot be adequately handled by those existing methods and datasets. To address this problem, research efforts have been made to create spontaneous facial expression image datasets as well as to develop algorithms that can process naturally induced affective behavior. This paper introduces these advances and focuses on a small and specific area of spontaneous facial expression recognition. In this paper, we are concentrating on non-posed image acquisition protocols, which strongly influence the subjects for evoking expressions as natural as possible. We categorize the acquisition protocols into four different parts: image acquisition while playing video games, watching emotional videos, during interviews and from other sources. The taxonomy of facial expression acquisition protocols tells about the typical conditions responsible for producing specific facial expressions in that condition. We also address some important design issues related to spontaneous facial expression recognition systems and list the facial expression databases, which are strictly not acted and non-posed. We also put light on the applications of spontaneously evoked facial expression acquisition and recognition because they have potential medical significance. Moreover, we provide a comprehensive analysis and summary of spontaneous facial expression recognition methods by revealing their pros and cons for future researchers.
... As part of this developmental trajectory, by about 6 weeks old, infants show a remarkable sensitivity to the qualities of adult communication (Brazelton, Koslowski, and Main, 1974;Papousek and Papousek, 1975). They actively pursue social interaction with caregivers, and react in striking ways if such interactions are not forthcoming (Cohn and Tronick, 1983;Field et al., 1988). Therefore, the reciprocal recognition system functions to ensure prolonged and intricate parent and infant interaction. ...
Human infants need prolonged, intensive caregiving to survive and thrive. Human infants’ dependency is unlike many other newborn animals that are mobile shortly after birth, allowing them a much larger degree of independence from their parents. This chapter reviews the emerging evidence for the way that underlying human brain systems support the parent-infant relationship. Starting with the earliest elements of the parent-infant relationship, orienting to infant cues, it demonstrates how the human brain is optimized to perceive cues across multiple sensory modalities rapidly and efficiently. This “parental instinct” in response to infant cues appears to be present for nonparents as well as parents, demonstrating how our parental capacities are well substantiated in the brain prior to parenthood. The chapter also shows how the expertise gained through parenting experience changes the structural and functional properties of the brain in ways that may optimize future caregiving.
... Globally, the findings of the present study seem to suggest a different impact of clinical conditions related to SUD and risk for post-partum depression on maternal EA, ranging from impairments in single EA dimensions to effects that are more likely to affect the overall quality of mother-child relationship, determining different patterns of EA, thus encouraging the adoption of different levels of observation in the investigation of parent-child relationships. Moreover, another strength of the current study is represented by the specific focus on caregiving behaviors in a particularly sensitive period (i.e., early infancy) of child's life, during which the impact of risk for maternal postpartum depression and SUD could be particular detrimental with respect to child development and to the establishment of early mother-child interactive patterns (Cohn and Tronick, 1983;Lester et al., 2002;Tronick et al., 2005). Nevertheless, it is essential to emphasize that the cross-sectional and observational nature of the current study does not allow us to draw any causal inferences. ...
Background: Maternal substance use disorder (SUD) and depression have been extensively associated with dysfunctions in parent-child interactions. However, few studies have compared caregiving behaviors of these mothers. The current study aims to explore maternal emotional availability (EA) in mothers with maternal SUD and depressive symptoms in order to investigate whether these conditions represent a different risk gradient for early parenting.
Methods: Mother-infant relationship was investigated in 18 mothers with SUD, 11 mothers at risk for depression, and 39 mothers from general population. The dyads were videotaped during a free-play session and the quality of parent-child interactions was assessed using the EA Scales (EAS) and the Emotional Attachment and EA Clinical Screener (EA2-CS).
Results: Mothers with SUD scored lower on sensitivity, non-intrusiveness, and non-hostility with respect to the low-risk sample, whereas mothers at risk for depression scored lower on sensitivity and non-hostility compared to the latter. No significant differences between mothers with SUD and mothers at risk for depression emerged on the EAS, whereas different specific classifications on the EA Clinical Screener were found for the SUD (i.e., Complicated), depression (i.e., Detached), and low-risk (i.e., Emotionally Available) samples.
Conclusion: If the current findings are replicated, they might have significant implications for selecting targets of early mother-infant interventions.
... Babys sind sogar schon früh in der Lage in einen wechselseitigen Austausch mit ihrer Bezugsperson zu treten und sich an der Regulation der Beziehung zu beteiligen (Beebe, 1986). Für die schon bei Säuglingen beobachtbaren Kontaktbedürfnisse und -erwartungen sprechen auch die so genannten Still-face-Experimente, bei denen die Mutter instruiert wird, für einige Minuten Depressivität zu simulieren, indem sie jegliche Mimik einstellt; bereits drei-bis viermonatige reagieren hierauf mit heftigem Protest und Verzweiflung (Cohn & Tronick, 1983). Die von Spitz supponierte Undifferenziertheit in der Affektivität von Babys lässt sich ebenfalls kaum noch empirisch aufrechterhalten; die meisten der sieben bis neun Primäraffekte (Interesse/Neugier, Überraschung, Ekel, Freude, Wut/Ärger, Traurigkeit, Angst/Furcht, Schuld und Scham) lassen sich zuverlässig in Situationen evozieren, in denen auch Erwachsene entsprechend oder ähnlich reagieren würden (Dornes, 1995(Dornes, , 1997. ...
... Two-to three-month-old infants of depressed mothers, in face-to-face situations where mothers were asked to make their faces go still, failed to show the disengagement and distress common in babies of well mothers. They had accommodated to a muted pattern of interaction (Cohn & Tronick, 1983;Field et al., 1990). These effects begin early and can persist with attunement between the mother and infant becoming disrupted. ...
Recent research in the field of positive psychology emphasises the important role positive emotions play, not
only in overall human well-being, but also in the development of resilience. In this paper, we use Barbara
Fredrickson’s ‘broaden and build’ theory of positive emotions (Fredrickson, 2003) to explain the importance
of generating positive emotions in the therapy room in addition to attending to the problems that our clients
bring. We illustrate this with some examples of school-based therapeutic group work which aims to build
and cultivate resilience through an ‘upward spiral’ of positive emotions. These examples also demonstrate
the importance of including the child’s community in this work: their family, peers and school.
Lo sviluppo della comprensione sociale. Una rassegna narrativa focalizzata sul linguaggio nella fascia 0-6 anni. La rassegna ha un duplice obiettivo: esaminare lo sviluppo della comprensione sociale nel periodo 0-6 anni, considerando congiuntamente i costrutti di 'teoria della mente' e 'comprensione delle emozioni', non di rado esaminati separatamente; approfondire il ruolo del linguaggio come correlato e predittore di comprensione sociale. Il lavoro si conclude con l'individuazione di due particolari aree di ricerca futura: lo sviluppo della comprensione sociale implicita, e la validazione di interventi per la promozione della comprensione sociale in bambini con profilo tipico e atipico.
The ability for self-related thought is historically considered to be a uniquely human characteristic. Nonetheless, as technological knowledge advances, it comes as no surprise that the plausibility of humanoid self-awareness is not only theoretically explored but also engineered. Could the emerging behavioural and cognitive capabilities in artificial agents be comparable to humans? By employing a cross-disciplinary approach, the present essay aims to address this question by providing a comparative overview on the emergence of self-awareness as demonstrated in early childhood and robotics. It argues that developmental psychologists can gain invaluable theoretical and methodological insights by considering the relevance of artificial agents in better understanding the behavioural manifestations of human self-consciousness.
Interpersonal aspects of depression have received considerable research attention in the past 2 decades. This work often has been guided by J. C. Coyne's (1976b) interactional model of depression or P. M. Lewinsohn's (1974) social skill deficit theory of depression. A review of this research indicates that depressed people reliably experience rejection from those in their social environment and that depression generally is associated with impairments in social behavior. However, this research does not explain exactly what depressed people do to elicit rejection, or exactly why others react negatively to them. Research derived from communication theories on responsiveness, politeness, and expectations for nonverbal involvement illuminates that interpersonal cycle in depression. The role of these impairments in the cause, symptoms, course, subtypes, and therapy of depression is discussed.
This article reviews the various literatures on the adjustment of children of depressed parents, difficulties in parenting and parent–child interaction in these families, and contextual factors that may play a role in child adjustment and parent depression. First, issues arising from the recurrent, episodic, heterogeneous nature of depression are discussed. Second, studies on the adjustment of children with a depressed parent are summarized. Early studies that used depressed parents as controls for schizophrenic parents found equivalent risk for child disturbance. Subsequent studies using better-defined samples of depressed parents found that these children were at risk for a full range of adjustment problems and at specific risk for clinical depression. Third, the parenting difficulties of depressed parents are described and explanatory models of child adjustment problems are outlined. Contextual factors, particularly marital distress, remain viable alternative explanations for both child and parenting problems. Fourth, important gaps in the literature are identified, and a consistent, if unintentional, “mother-bashing” quality in the existing literature is noted. Given the limitations in knowledge, large-scale, long-term, longitudinal studies would be premature at this time.
Important advances have recently been made in studying emotions in infants and the nature of emotional communication between infants and adults. Infant emotions and emotional communications are far more organized than previously thought. Infants display a variety of discrete affective expressions that are appropriate to the nature of events and their context. They also appreciate the emotional meaning of the affective displays of caretakers. The emotional expressions of the infant and the caretaker function to allow them to mutually regulate their interactions. Indeed, it appears that a major determinant of children’s development is related to the operation of this communication system. Positive development may be associated with the experience of coordinated interactions characterized by frequent reparations of interactive errors and the transformation of negative affect into positive affect, whereas negative development appears to be associated with sustained periods of interactive failure and negative affect.
28 | frühe Kindheit | 0322 | Thema Entwicklungskrisen im Angesicht der Katastrophe Auswirkungen der gegenwärtigen existenziellen Bedrohungen durch Pandemie, Krieg und Klimakatastrophe auf die frühe Entwicklung und Beziehung von Babys, Kleinkindern und ihren Eltern | Von Susanne Hommel Menschen gehen mit Krisen sehr unterschiedlich um. Während die einen psychisch belastet sind, unter Ängsten und Depressionen leiden, sind die anderen kurz niedergeschlagen, passen sich an die neuen Bedingungen dann scheinbar leicht an und gehen aus der Krise unbeschadet hervor. Der Begriff Resilienz stammt ursprünglich aus der Materialkunde, wo der englische Ausdruck "resilience" die Eigen-schaft eines Materials beschreibt, nach starker Verformung wieder die ursprüngliche Gestalt anzuneh-men. Auf den Menschen übertragen, bezeichnet Resilienz die Fähigkeit, schwierige Lebenssituationen ohne anhaltende psychische Beeinträchtigung zu überstehen (Kalisch 2017). Wie Resilienz entsteht, ist eine Frage, die die Wissenschaft seit Längerem interessiert. Der Pionier der Resilienzforschung, Viktor Frankl, ein jüdischer Psychiater, hat in seinem Buch " …trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen" (1946) eindrück-lich geschildert, dass Menschen trotz schlimm-ster Bedrohung psychisch gesund bleiben können. Seine Lebensgeschichte dient häufig als Beispiel, dass Menschen auch anhaltende existenzielle Bedrohung durch Vernichtung und Tod physisch wie psychisch überleben können. Philosophisch gesehen beruht ein konstruktiver Umgang der Menschen und der Menschheit mit individueller und kollektiver Bedrohung, Trauma, Belastung, Beschädigung, massivem Stress, Defiziten und Risi-kolagen auf dem Grundsatz der Veränderbarkeit, dem Potenzial von Entwicklungsspielräumen und in diesem Sinne sowohl auf dem Prinzip Hoffnung (Bloch 1985) als auch dem Prinzip Verantwortung (Jonas 1998). Basierend auf einem positiven Men-schenbild, welches die Bedeutung von sozialen Verhältnissen, mental-kognitiven Strukturen, Handlungsfähigkeit sowie Gen-Umwelt-Interakti-onen betont. Im weiteren medizinischen und psychologischen Diskurs der 1950er Jahre über den Begriff Resilienz ist die Forschung der US-amerikanischen Entwick-lungspsychologin Emmy Werner bedeutsam, die zeigen konnte, dass jedes dritte Kind trotz Armut, elterlichem Alkoholismus, häuslicher Gewalt und Misshandlung widererwartend psychisch gesund und sozial gut integriert war und sich zu einem psychisch stabilen, erfolgreichen Erwachsenen entwickelte (Werner 2011, 2012): "Vulnerable but invincible" (verletzlich, doch unbesiegbar) nannte Werner diese Kinder. Entscheidende Faktoren für diese positive Entwicklung waren Humor, die Bereitschaft, Hilfe anzunehmen, Optimismus sowie eine gewisse Form von Spiritualität. Und von erheb-licher Bedeutung war zudem die Bindung an eine konstante Bezugsperson, egal ob Mutter, Vater, Großmutter, Onkel oder Lehrerin. Entscheidend war, dass es eine Person gab, die an das Kind glaubte und ihm vermittelte, dass es so, wie es ist, gut, richtig und angenommen ist. Kinder reagieren unterschiedlich auf existenzielle Krisen wie Krieg. So beobachtete Anna Freud 1944, dass Babys und Klein-kinder in Kriegszeiten wenig Angst zeigten, wenn es ihrer Mutter gelang, ihre eigenen Gefühle soweit zu regulieren, dass sie ihrem Kind ausreichend Sicherheit vermitteln konnte. Und dass sie im Falle der Trennung von der Mutter, im Kontext der "war nurseries" von Anna Freud und ihren Kolleg:innen betreut, sich im Kontakt mit einer fremden Bezugsperson schnell beruhi-gen konnten, wenn diese Bezugsperson emotional verfügbar und bezogen war (Freud 1944, 1973; Pretorius 2019). Die Säuglingsforschung gibt uns seit den 1970er Jahren einen umfassenden Einblick in die Zusammenhänge elterlicher psy-chischer Belastung, kindlicher Regulationsfähigkeiten und der Qualität der Eltern-Kind-Interaktion und Beziehung in unserem kulturellen Raum.
The literature on failure to thrive (FTT) infants is peppered with anecdotes of their depression; however, no systematic data verify these observations. This study is an exploratory investigation of emotional expressivity in nonorganic FTT and normal infants. Twelve FTT infants (ages 6 to 25 months) and 12 matched controls were videotaped in social and cognitive contexts. Although overall differences in the total level of emotional expressivity were not found, FTT infants displayed more negative affect, more dissmell (medial upper lip raised), and used their lower faces less often to express emotion. Further, evidence for the early development of a distinctive expressive style was observed. How infants' facial expressions reflect their early socialization of emotion, and how particular patterns of affective experience may shape the subsequent development of cognitive and social processes are discussed.
Background:
Bipolar offspring are considered a high-risk group for developing mental disorders. Developmental outcomes result from additive and interactive effects of biological vulnerability and environmental influences. Mother-infant interactions represent important early environmental influences that may modify infants' risk of mental disorders. The aim of the current prospective study was to investigate the patterns and development of mother-infant interactions in the first year of life in dyads in which the mothers have bipolar disorder (BD).
Methods:
Twenty-six dyads in which the mothers had BD and 28 dyads in which the mothers had no mental disorder were video-taped in a free play interaction. The Parent-Child Early Relational Assessment (PCERA) was used to assess the quality of the interactions on three domains (maternal behaviour, infant behaviour and dyadic coordination) at 3 and 12 months of infant age. First, we compared the mother-infant interaction patterns between the two groups at 12 months. Second, we investigated how the patterns developed within and between the groups from infant ages 3 to 12 months.
Results:
BD dyads demonstrated significantly more challenges in all three interaction domains at infant age 12 months compared to the healthy dyads. This observation was in line with the findings at infant age 3 months. Subdued expression of positive affect and mutual underinvolvement represented core challenges in maternal and infant behaviours in the BD dyads. Continuous difficulties with dyadic coordination and reciprocity were the most concerning interaction behaviours at 3 and 12 months. On the positive side, there was little expression of negative affect or tension in maternal, infant and dyadic behaviour, and some positive changes in infant behaviour from 3 to 12 months.
Conclusions:
The current results suggest that challenges in mother-infant interaction patterns in the first year of life may enhance the developmental risk for bipolar offspring. Clinical interventions should address both the BD mothers' needs in relation to postpartum mood deviations and mother-infant interactions. We suggest interaction interventions to promote dyadic coordination and reciprocity, such as helping mothers being more sensitive to their infant's cues and to provide attuned contingent responses.
The aim of this paper is to present the principles of intersubjectivity as a second-person relational account of mind, set against individualist first- and third-person accounts of the sharing of mental representations. I will set out a summary of these positions and defend the claim that understanding proto-conversations as “expressive communications” allows one to understand them as genuine communications, as in, mutually manifest communications that entail intersubjectivity. To support this interpretation, I will propose a novel explanation of expression, understood as constitutive of the mental state.
Infants look at others' faces to gather social information. Newborns look equally at human and monkey faces but prefer human faces by 1 month, helping them learn to communicate and interact with others. Infants later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) look at human faces less than neurotypical infants, which may underlie some deficits in social‐communication later in life. Here, we asked whether infants later diagnosed with ASD differ in their preferences for both human and nonhuman primate faces compared to neurotypical infants over their first 2 years of life. We compare infants' relative looking times to human or monkey faces paired with nonface controls (Experiment 1) and infants' total looking times to pairs of human and monkey faces (Experiment 2). Across two experiments, we find that between 6 and 18 months, infants later diagnosed with ASD show a greater downturn (decrease after an initial increase) in looking at both primate faces than neurotypical infants. A decrease in attention to primate faces may partly underlie the social‐communicative difficulties in children with ASD and could reveal how early perceptual experiences with faces affect development. Autism Res 2018. © 2018 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Lay Summary
Looking at faces helps infants learn to interact with others. Infants look equally at human and monkey faces at birth but prefer human faces by 1 month. Infants later diagnosed with ASD who show deficits in social‐communication look at human faces less than neurotypical infants. We find that a downturn (decline after an initial increase) in attention to both human and monkey faces between 6 and 18 months may partly underlie the social‐communicative difficulties in children with ASD.
Videotaped 37 infants in face-to-face play with their mothers at 6, 13, and 26 wks of age. Analysis proceeded at 3 levels: (a) Ss' periods of attention toward the mothers significantly overlapped with the mothers' facially expressive behavior, especially as Ss grew older. Whereas the total proportion of time looking at mothers decreased, the time looking at them while they were
on did not decrease. (b) Ss' Vocalizations, Smiles, and Mouth Openings clustered into "runs" (as described by previous investigators), but at 6 wks these occurred only when the mothers were
on. By 26 wks of age, Ss' clusters of expression had become autonomous turns in a dialoglike exchange. (c) Analysis of contingent sequences following the onset of infant attention showed that with Ss 6 wks old, mothers' facial greetings—Nodding, Smiling, and so forth—were only rarely effective in eliciting expressive greetings, but without the mothers' greetings Ss almost never made such responses. With 13-wk-old Ss, mothers more easily elicited greetings, and some spontaneous (unelicited) greetings by Ss could also be seen. With 26-wk-old Ss, the spontaneous greetings had become as frequent as those elicited by the mothers. (12 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In its most general form, the discrepancy hypothesis states that an organism attends and affectively responds to new stimuli as an inverted-U function of the stimuli’s physical or conceptual discrepancy (i.e., dissimilarity) from a well-familiarized standard stimulus. That is, moderate discrepancies from highly familiar stimuli receive both the highest degree of attention and positive affect, whereas stimuli that are quite familiar or extremely different from what the organism knows well receive relatively less attention and less positive—perhaps even negative—affective responses and evaluations. The hypothesis is presented graphically in Figure 1.
Effects of early separation and experimental manipulations on infant-mother face-to-face interactions were investigated. Interactions were videotaped at 3½ months post expected date of delivery for 12 separated, premature, respiratory distress syndrome babies receiving low Brazelton interaction scores; 12 nonseparated, postterm postmature babies receiving low Brazelton scores; and 12 healthy, term babies. Dependent measures included the percentage of interaction time that the infant gazed at his mother and the percentage of infant gaze time that the mother was active. Experimental manipulations included the mother trying to keep her infant's attention and the mother imitating her infant's behaviors. The attention-getting manipulation resulted in more maternal activity and less infant gaze than in a spontaneous interaction, and the imitation manipulation in less maternal activity and more infant gaze. The facilitating effects of imitation were related to its lesser information processing demands and the greater attentiveness and contingent responsiveness of the mother. The absence of interaction differences between the postmature and premature suggested that separation contributed less to later interaction disturbances than did early deficits tapped by the Brazelton Neonatal Scale.
Presents an ethological description of early mother-child interactions based on observations of 5 mother-infant pairs during the 1st 6 mo of life. The infant's behavior with a furry object and with the mother is described. The role of the mother, her communication with the infant, and the cyclical nature of the mother-child interaction are discussed. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Describes a system for assessing infant–adult face-to-face interactions, which uses as its basic unit of analysis sets of combinations of expressive behaviors called "monadic phases." The system involves videotaping a face-to-face interaction, categorizing each expressive behavior, and transforming the combinations of behaviors (face, body, head, eye, voice, and hand movements) into monadic phases. To evaluate this system, 5 mother–infant pairs were evaluated; infants ranged in age from 80 to 92 days. Findings are discussed in terms of proportion of time and duration for each phase (protest, avoid, monitor, set, play, and talk) for the infants and for each mother (avert, avoid, monitor, elicit, set, play, and talk); infant transitions among the phases; relationships between infant and maternal phases; and leads and follows in the interactions. Analyses indicated that there are at least 2 levels of organization and orderliness in infant–adult interactions: The 1st concerns the rate and quality of changes between phases, and the 2nd involves the different states or relatedness that occur jointly and simultaneously. Limitations of the monadic phase system are discussed. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
From a sample of 18 normal full-term Negro females, findings indicate active regulation of visual input differentially related to the experimental stimuli; the observed discriminative visual behavior of infants in the 1st 2 mo. of life does not appear to be determined solely on the basis of stimulus properties but seems to reflect a more complex level of information processing, including associations from past experience with the stimulus object. (19 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Presents an animal model of how learned helplessness may manifest itself as depression and anxiety. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Reviews studies of nonhuman species and extrapolates from animal to human social behavior. Questions of causation and development in communication, early social experience, mother-infant interaction, aggression and sociosexual behavior, and group structure and spatial relationships are discussed. (35 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Considers the goal of mother-infant play activity to be the mutual regulation of stimuli so as to maintain an optimal level of affectively positive arousal. Observations of mothers and their 3-mo-old infants indicate that maternal behaviors are infant-elicited variations of normal adult interpersonal behaviors. The infant contributes to the regulation through the process of gaze alternation. (42 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
One method for identifying contingency relationships in a sequence of observed behaviors studies occurrences of matching behaviors
at successive event or time steps from a criterion event. This paper briefly summarizes the method and presents a computer
program for generating lag conditional probabilities and associated measures for assessing statistical significance.
Twelve 10- to 16-week-old infants were presented with nursery rhymes spoken with speech sounds and lip movements in-synchrony and out-of-synchrony by 400 msec. Two observers measured the amount of time the infants did not attend to the two types of stimuli. The results showed that the infants attended significantly less to the out-of-synchrony presentation than to the in-synchrony presentation. This finding was interpreted as an indication that young infants are aware of the congruence between lip movements and speech sounds.
The normal feedback infants receive from their mothers in face-to-face interaction was distorted by having the mothers face their infants but remain facially unresponsive. The infants studied reacted with intense wariness and eventual withdrawal, demonstrating the importance of interactional reciprocity and the ability of infants to regulate their emotional displays.
This paper reports on two cases of early childhood psychosis, and on findings obtained from an intensive analysis of movies of the infancy and early childhood of the two children. In both cases, the parents made these films before they realized their children were ill, and therefore before any diagnostic or therapeutic intervention. Thus, the films serve as a kind of prospective study documenting many aspects of two children's infancy. The movies show the children developing the first signs of psychosis in their first year, and its features toward the end of their first year and in their second and third years. The film analysis, coupled with the clinical investigation made when the cases came to professional attention, provide a rare opportunity to study the early natural history of childhood psychosis.
This paper extends the observations of early mother-infant face-to-face interaction to situations in which infants 1 to 6 months of age interact with fathers and strangers. Videotaped records of these laboratory interactions were scored second by second. We saw differences in the behavior of both infants and adults in these interactions. Even infants less than 2 months of age behaved distinctively with the different adults in these settings. Infants showed more positive affective displays with both parents than with strangers. The implications of these findings for the theoretical understanding of the infant's affective development as well as for public health concerns are discussed.
The salience of maternal temporal style of playful stimulation to 3- and 5-month-old infants during free play was investigated. 32 mother-infant dyads were videotaped for 8 min of interaction which consisted of 4 2-min phases of differing maternal temporal styles: natural (usual), slower-than-usual, return-to-usual, and faster-than-usual temporal styles. Multivariate analyses revealed that changes in the pacing of playful stimulation significantly affected several infant, maternal, and interactive variables. For both the 3- and 5-month-olds, the initial phase of natural temporal style emerged as the period of most positive interactions, and the faster play phase included more positive behaviors than the slower play phase. While most maternal behaviors were very similar in the 2 phases of natural temporal style, infant and some interactive variables failed to demonstrate a return-to-baseline effect. Patterns of differential responding suggested the contributions of possible sequencing effects, infant temporal estimation capacities, and expectancies for the appropriateness of pacing in playful exchanges.
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