Manual actions of nine- to fifteen-week-old human infants during face-to-face interaction with their mothers

This paper presents evidence that the manual actions of infants as young as 9 weeks of age may occur in relation to their facial expression, gaze direction, and vocalization. 28 full-term, healthy infants were observed during a 2-min spontaneous face-to-face interaction with their mothers. Videotapes were coded in real time using the following categories of manual action: POINT, SPREAD, CURL, and GRASP. Facial expressions, gaze direction, and vocalizations also were coded for each infant. All of the infants displayed CURL, 20 infants displayed SPREAD, 18 POINTED, and 11 showed GRASP. Right/left differences appeared for the categories CURL, SPREAD, and GRASP, but not for POINT. Hand action was systematically organized into sequences with other infant action. POINT occurred before or after mouthing and vocalization, CURL during vocalization, and SPREAD when the baby was looking away from the mother. The results are discussed in relation to their implications for the ontogeny of nonverbal communicative gestures.     

Beyond the Face: An Empirical Study of Infant Affective Configurations of Facial, Vocal, Gestural, and Regulatory Behaviors

This article evaluates the extent to which infants' expressive modalities of face, gaze, voice, gesture, and posture form coherent affective configurations and whether these configurations are related to specific interactive contexts. 50 6-month-old infants and their mothers were videotaped in Tronick's Face-to-Face Still-Face Paradigm. The infants' gaze, voice, gestures, self-regulatory, and withdrawal behaviors were coded with the Infant Regulatory Scoring System (IRSS). The infants' facial expressions were coded with Izard's AFFEX system. Contingency analyses of IRSS behaviors and AFFEX expressions revealed 4 distinct affective configurations: Social Engagement, Object Engagement, Passive Withdrawal, and Active Protest. These affective configurations were differentially distributed among the different interactive contexts of the Face-to-Face Still-Face Paradigm. It is suggested that behaviors and facial expressions are fundamental expressive units flexibly organized into configurations that convey messages about the infant's internal state and intentions. Furthermore, it is hypothesized that the basic units of the infant's experience are these distinct affective configurations of emotion and behavior.     

The social ecology and early parenting of Caucasian adolescent mothers

Social characteristics, maternal behaviors, and the home environments of Caucasian adolescent and nonadolescent mothers were investigated in a sample of 50 primiparous low- and middle-class women and their 4-month-old infants. The mothers were interviewed about their child-care network and about stressful life events that may have occurred since the infant's birth. The HOME inventory was completed and videotapes of 2 hours of home observations were coded to assess maternal proximity, verbalizations, activity, and physical contact with the infant. Interview data indicated that adolescent mothers relied more frequently on other teenagers and other network members for help in child care than nonadolescent mothers. In addition, they also received more frequent support from their mothers and less frequent help from their partner's and partner's mother and siblings than nonadolescent mothers. During the home visit, they were less verbal with their infants and scored significantly lower on the Responsiveness and Maternal Involvement subscales as well as on the total HOME inventory; these results were replicated on subgroups matched for socioeconomic status, emphasizing the unique social context and parenting practices of teenage mothers.     

Tactile Contact by Deaf and Hearing Mothers During Face-to-Face Interactions With Their Infants

Tactile contact with an infant plays an important role (though one largely overlooked by researchers until recently) in the development of synchronous interactive dialogues between caregiver and child. Dyads in which one or both partners are deaf present a unique opportunity to examine the use of touch as a means of optimizing or enhancing communication when the number of available sensory channels is restricted. Touch in these dyads may play an important role in eliciting visual attention, in alerting the infant that signed communication is forthcoming, in assisting the infant to achieve emotional regulation, or in simply maintaining contact even when the deaf child has looked away from the partner. The data presented here represent one attempt to investigate the role of touch in relation to deaf infants and deaf parents, for whom it may play a particularly salient role. Both deaf and hearing mothers were observed in videotaped face-to-face interactions with their infants (also either deaf or hearing); maternal behavior was coded for each event during which mothers initiated tactile contact with the infant and was classified according to intensity, location on the infant's body, and type of touch (e.g., active vs. passive). Results of this study indicate that deaf mothers may be especially responsive to the tactile needs of their deaf infants, as shown by qualitative differences in their behavioral interactions with 6- and 9-month-olds. However, hearing mothers with deaf infants also appear to be incorporating more active forms of touch in their interactions, although they tend to rely on longer durations of tactile contact than do the deaf mothers.     

Maternal depression and motherese: temporal and intonational features

Children of depressed parents are at increased risk for depression and other developmental problems. Recent research indicates that disturbances exist in face-to-face interactions between depressed mothers and their infants. In the present study, the effects of maternal depression on motherese, an interactive behavior that plays a significant role in affective, cognitive, and social development, were examined. 2 paralinguistic features of motherese were examined: temporal parameters of utterances and pauses and the frequency of use of 5 types of intonation contours typically found in motherese utterances. Face-to-face interactions between 36 mothers and their 3-4-month-old infants were audio-recorded, and hard copy records of pitch contours and relative intensity were produced for 2-min interaction sequences. Results indicated that depressed mothers failed to modify their behavior according to the behavior of the infant. They were significantly slower to respond to an infant vocalization, had more variable utterances and pauses, and were less likely to utilize the exaggerated intonation contours that are characteristic of motherese. The results provide evidence for a mechanism through which maternal depression increases the infant's risk for psychopathology.     

Responses to interactive stress: infants who are deaf or hearing

Nineteen infants who were deaf (D/H) and 19 infants who were hearing (H/H) were observed during face-to-face interactions with their hearing mothers. Infant behaviors were coded for repetitive physical activity and gaze aversion during two episodes of normal play which were interrupted by a "still-face" episode. Mothers' assessments of their infants as "difficult" or "easy" were derived from the Parenting Stress Index (Abidin, 1986). "Difficult" deaf infants displayed significantly more repetitive activity during the initial normal interaction and significantly more gaze aversion during the still-face episode, compared to "easy" deaf babies and both "easy" and "difficult" hearing babies. Implications of these findings are discussed in the context of parental perceptions of infant behaviors, and the importance of visual attention and nonverbal signals for the optimal development of infants who are deaf.     

The role of person familiarity in young infants' perception of emotional expressions

This research investigated the role of person familiarity in the ability of 3.5-month-old infants to recognize emotional expressions. Infants (N = 72) were presented simultaneously with two filmed facial expressions, happy and sad, accompanied by a single vocal expression that was concordant with one of the two facial expressions. Infants' looking preferences and facial expressions were coded. Results indicated that when the emotional expressions were portrayed by each infant's own mother, infants looked significantly longer toward the facial expressions that were accompanied by affectively matching vocal expressions. Infants who were presented with emotional expressions of an unfamiliar woman did not. Even when a brief delay was inserted between the presentation of facial and vocal expressions, infants who were presented with emotional expressions of their own mothers looked longer at the facial expression that was sound specified, indicating that some factor other than temporal synchrony guided their looking preferences. When infants viewed the films of their own mothers, they were more interactive and expressed more positive and less negative affect. Moreover, infants produced a greater number of full and bright smiles when the sound-specified emotion was "happy," and particularly when they viewed the happy expressions of their own mothers. The average duration of negative affect was significantly longer for infants who observed the unfamiliar woman than for those who observed their own mothers. These results show that when more contextual information-that is, person familiarity-was available, infants as young as 3.5 months of age recognized happy and sad expressions. These findings suggest that in the early stages of development, infants are sensitive to contextual information that potentially facilitates some of the meaning of others' emotional expressions.     

Emotion socialization and expressive development in preterm and full-term infants

The expressive behaviors of full-term and preterm infants and their mothers were examined during face-to-face interaction when the infants were approximately 2 1/2, 5, and 7 1/2 months old. Videotapes of the sessions were coded on a second-to-second basis using Izard's discrete emotion coding system. Overall, infants showed a linear increase in positive effect, especially interest and joy, and a corresponding decrease in negative affect, especially pain and knit brow, with age; decrease in negative affect was accounted for largely by the preterm infants. In terms of maternal responses, there was an increase in contingent responding to infant interest expressions and a decrease in contingent responding to infant pain expressions over time, especially in the case of the preterm infant. The data set as a whole was examined further to establish the directionality of influence between mothers and infants in change patterns over time. There was evidence of learning effects in infants as a function of maternal modeling and contingency patterns. Anomalies in maternal responses to preterm infant affect expressions were observed. Mothers of these infants displayed significantly less matching or imitation of their infant's facial expressions, showed random rather than contingent responsiveness to sadness, and a significant ignoring response to infant anger. These differences were attributed to differences in gazing patterns and negative emotion expression in preterm infants. The results are discussed within a framework of emotion socialization that recognizes bidirectionality of influence in the emotional patterns of mothers and infants.     

Emerging Social Regulatory Capacities as Seen in the Still-Face Situation

Early mother-infant interactions support infants' abilities to deal with stressful situations such as the withdrawal of maternal attention. The "still-face" paradigm provides a framework for studying the range of social regulatory capacities available to infants during stressful times. This study examined the responses of 62 3-4-month-old infants during the still-face situation. Infants' responses were coded in real time along 3 dimensions: gaze, affect, and state. 3 findings are presented: (1) Generally, infants responded to the still-face situation with predominantly neutral affect and looking away from their mothers. (2) Infants who looked longer at their mothers early in the still-face showed longer early positive affect and protested her absence less. (3) Girls more often showed an intensely negative response to the still-face. These findings are discussed in the context of the development of social regulatory capacities in infancy.     

Toddlers' emerging ways of achieving social coordinations with a peer

14 peer dyads were observed longitudinally at 16, 20, 24, 28, and 32 months to assess developmental changes in social coordinations (both action-to-action thematic relations and extended games). Each child's movements through the playroom, actions upon play material, vocalizations, verbalizations, and gestures were coded for their relation to the concurrent or immediately prior behavior of the peer: Unrelated, Tangential, Coordinated, Interfering. There was a marked increase with age in acts coordinated with those of a peer, and imitations of the peer's nonverbal actions accounted for most of the developmental change. The use of words to direct the peer in a coordinated way increased with age but remained infrequent. Developmental change in the frequency of games paralleled that for imitative acts, and imitative acts both established and set the theme for most of the games. Thus, imitating another's nonverbal actions is a core behavioral strategy for achieving social coordinations during the developmental period preceding reliance on verbal communication in peer interaction.     

Adult Tactile Stimulation during Face-to-Face Interactions Modulates Five-Month-Olds'' Affect and Attention

3 studies were designed to investigate infant responses to tactile stimulation during brief adult-infant interaction using a modified still-face (SF) procedure. When adults pose a neutral SF expression, infants decrease gazing and smiling at the adults, and some increase grimacing, relative to normal interaction periods. This SF effect was substantially reduced in Study 1 when mothers or strangers continued to touch infants during the SF period. In Studies 2 and 3, tactile versus visual and active versus passive aspects of adult touch were isolated during different SF periods. Visible, active adult hands unaccompanied by touch elicited infant attention, but not smiling, during the SF period. By contrast, active, not passive, adult touch substantially reduced the SF effect, even when the adult's hands were invisible. In the latter condition, infants continued to gaze and smile at the adult's SF. Thus, adult facial expressions are not the only modulator of infant affect and attention during social exchanges; adult touch appears to play an active role.     

Self in context: autonomy and relatedness in Japanese and U.S. mother-preschooler dyads

Cultural differences and similarities in socialization during two contrasting laboratory tasks were examined in 30 Japanese mothers and their preschoolers, both temporarily residing in the United States, and 30 U.S. mothers and their preschoolers (age: M = 55.8 months, SD = 4.9). Mother and child actions, speech, emotion, and attention were coded from videotaped observations during a free play task and waiting task. Cross-cultural comparisons showed that U.S. mothers had more conversations that emphasized individual experiences, more often acted as playmates and used joint attention, maintained more physical distance, showed more positive emotions, and made more positive responses to child accomplishment. In contrast, Japanese mothers had more conversations that emphasized shared experiences, showed more divided attention, and maintained social role distinctions. Similar, but fewer cultural differences emerged for children. However, maternal and child characteristics also varied by task context. The results suggested an emphasis on autonomy in U.S. dyads and an emphasis on relatedness in Japanese dyads, but the interactions with task context revealed the coexistence of autonomy and relatedness.     

Does Gaze Direction Modulate Facial Expression Processing in Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder?

Two experiments investigated whether children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) integrate relevant communicative signals, such as gaze direction, when decoding a facial expression. In Experiment 1, typically developing children (9–14 years old; n  = 14) were faster at detecting a facial expression accompanying a gaze direction with a congruent motivational tendency (i.e., an avoidant facial expression with averted eye gaze) than those with an incongruent motivational tendency. Children with ASD (9–14 years old; n  = 14) were not affected by the gaze direction of facial stimuli. This finding was replicated in Experiment 2, which presented only the eye region of the face to typically developing children ( n  = 10) and children with ASD ( n  = 10). These results demonstrated that children with ASD do not encode and/or integrate multiple communicative signals based on their affective or motivational tendency.     

Physiological effects of infant exposure to environmental tobacco smoke: a passive observation study

This study explored infant physiologic responses of exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) using a longitudinal passive observation study with a control group. Fifteen smoking and 15 non-smoking mothers were initially contacted in hospital maternity units, with home visits made when their infants were 2, 4, and 6 weeks old. Exposure to ETS was measured using infant urinary nicotine and cotinine levels. The physiologic effects of infant ETS exposure were measured by rectal temperature, pulse rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and oxygen saturation. The smoking mothers in this sample were poorer, had less education, and were less likely to be married than the mothers who did not smoke. At birth, the infants of smoking mothers had higher diastolic blood pressure than infants of non-smoking mothers (p < .008). Mothers who smoke cigarettes should be educated that maternal smoking behavior can affect an infant's cardiovascular function. Parents should also be counseled about the risks of smoking in close proximity and/or in an enclosed space with an infant, especially in a motor vehicle.     

It's All a Matter of Timing: Sign Visibility and Sign Reference in Deaf and Hearing Mothers of 18-Month-Old Children

The signed and spoken language produced by 14 mothers to their 18-month-old children during free play was analyzed. All the children had profound prelingual deafness. Seven of the mothers were profoundly deaf and fluent users of British Sign Language (BSL) or Auslan. The other seven were hearing and had enrolled in a signing program. Maternal signed utterances were classified according to whether they were made in the child's line of sight and whether they had a salient context; that is, they referred to an object or event at the child's current focus of attention. Spoken utterances were coded by word length. Comparisons between the two groups showed that both deaf and hearing mothers produced a majority of single-sign utterances (rather than utterances containing two or more signs). Deaf mothers also produced a majority of single-word spoken utterances, whereas the hearing mothers produced a significantly greater proportion of multiword utterances. As predicted, deaf mothers were more successful than hearing mothers in presenting signed utterances with a salient context that were visible to their children. Across the group as a whole, the total number of visible and salient signed utterances produced in 10 minutes was positively correlated with the total number of occasions on which mothers successfully redirected their child's attention or the child spontaneously turned to look at the mother. This suggests that deaf children who are visually attentive to their mothers receive a greater number of visible signed utterances with a salient context. I argue that this provides a more secure context for early language development.     

Mother-Child Play: Sequential Interactions and the Relation between Maternal Beliefs and Behaviors

This investigation of mother and toddler play had 2 goals. The primary goal was to examine the types of play mothers introduce in direct response to their toddlers' play. A secondary and exploratory goal was to examine the relation between maternal knowledge about child play and actual maternal play behaviors. 50 mothers and their 21-month-old toddlers were observed at home during free play. Mother and child exploratory, nonsymbolic, and symbolic play were coded. Sequential analyses revealed that mothers adjusted their play to their children's play level by responding to their children with play that was either at the same level or at a higher level than their children's play. Furthermore, mothers who were more knowledgeable about early play development more often responded to their children's play by introducing higher level play. These findings suggest that mothers tend to play with their toddlers in ways that might promote their child's development, and that mothers with more knowledge about play development provide their children with appropriately challenging play interactions.     

Defensive Behaviors in Infant Rhesus Monkeys: Ontogeny and Context-dependent Selective Expression

We examined the ontogeny of the infant rhesus monkey's defensive behaviors and the ability to modulate them in response to specific environmental cues. Rhesus infants in 4 age groups (N = 8 per group) were briefly separated from their mothers and tested under 3 conditions: alone, in the presence of a human who averted his gaze, and in the presence of a human staring at them. Infants as young as 0 to 2 weeks displayed defensive behaviors but did not selectively respond to the human's presence or direction of gaze. By 9 to 12 weeks of age, infants modulated their responses in relation to the parameters of the threat. At this age, infant rhesus monkeys undergo cognitive and emotional changes associated with brain development similar to those in human infants 7 to 12 months old. This also is the time when human infants engage in complex emotional and behavioral responses to threatening situations. Understanding the development and expression of defensive behaviors in infant monkeys should be applicable to similar issues in emotional development of human infants.     

Head-mounted eye tracking: a new method to describe infant looking

Despite hundreds of studies describing infants' visual exploration of experimental stimuli, researchers know little about where infants look during everyday interactions. The current study describes the first method for studying visual behavior during natural interactions in mobile infants. Six 14-month-old infants wore a head-mounted eye-tracker that recorded gaze during free play with mothers. Results revealed that infants' visual exploration is opportunistic and depends on the availability of information and the constraints of infants' own bodies. Looks to mothers' faces were rare following infant-directed utterances but more likely if mothers were sitting at infants' eye level. Gaze toward the destination of infants' hand movements was common during manual actions and crawling, but looks toward obstacles during leg movements were less frequent.     

Infants' interactions with mother, sibling, and peer: contrasts and relations between interaction systems

The role of the mother in structuring interactions with the infant during free play was examined at 6 and 9 months. Maternal scaffolding of turn-taking exchanges was then contrasted to the forms of turn-taking apparent in sibling-infant and peer-infant observations. Infants spent more time in turn-taking exchanges with their mothers than with their siblings or peers. These exchanges most often took the form of mothers creating sequences by responding to infants' social and nonsocial acts and by eliciting social and nonsocial responses from the infants. Infants' exchanges with older siblings were briefer and more typically involved the older children eliciting nonsocial responses from the infants but not responding contingently to the infants' interests and actions. Infant peers spent less time in turn-taking exchanges, and their interactions showed less evidence of scaffolding. At the same time, the proportion of strictly social interactions was greatest with peers. Relations were apparent between infants' turn-taking experiences with their mothers and the infants' subsequent interactions with their siblings and with their peers. Relations were also found between infants' interaction experiences with their older siblings and subsequent peer interaction. Those infants with more extensive turn-taking experience with more skilled social partners were subsequently observed to engage in more extensive turn-taking interactions with a peer. These results are discussed in terms of studies on mother-infant attachment and peer competence, maternal scaffolding, and Vygotsky's zone of proximal development.