The early appearance and intergenerational transmission of maternal traumatic experiences in the context of mother-infant interaction

The paper describes the case of a girl of 8 weeks, referred by her mother because of 'intolerable hysterical attacks' triggering maternal impulses of abuse. Maternal perception of her infant was distorted to the extent that the mother was re-experiencing encounters with her own intrusive and traumatizing mother in the face of her screaming child. She also perceived the infant's motor impulses as physical attacks on herself and expressed intense anxieties about her daughter's future aggressive potential. The infant was viewed by her mother as extraordinarily and dangerously greedy. Even neutral infantile vocalizations were perceived as manipulating and sadistic. She tried to ward off these anxieties by employing a rigid scheme of rules and obsessively controlling the father's and grandmother's interaction with the child. The mother feared being overwhelmed by the infant's needs if she were to yield to them in a flexible way. The mother's background of early neglect and trauma is described, in the light of recent literature about the early intergenerational transmission of traumatic experiences, in order to demonstrate possible treatment modalities and the need to consider both protective and risk factors.     

Intervention to improve mother-infant interaction and infant development

Thirty-three infants at risk for developmental delay were videotaped interacting with their mothers. Maternal position during interaction (facing, beside, or behind the infant) was strongly related to the frequency of maternal interactional behavior and to indices of infant communication and cognitive development. Intervention to teach mothers to use the facing position showed that improvement in position was related to increases in both maternal interactional behavior and infant development. Because the mother's position is easily assessed, understood, and changed by a mother, it is potentially useful to early intervention programs, particularly those serving at risk populations.     

Mother parity as a main and moderating influence on early mother-infant interaction

This study investigated main and moderating effects of mother parity on maternal attitudes and behaviors. In a sample of 87 mothers with 5-month-old infants, relations between determinants of parenting (maternal personality, marital quality, infant negative emotionality) and maternal behavior and attitudes (sensitivity, self-efficacy, mother-reported infant temperament) were examined as a function of parity. Results revealed both main and moderating effects of parity. Multiparous mothers reported higher self-efficacy, whereas primiparous mothers reported more of an increase in marital ambivalence following the baby's birth. The relations of self-efficacy, sensitivity, and mother-reported infant temperament to a laboratory measure of infant crying all differed by parity. In addition, for primiparous mothers, negative personality traits related to reported infant temperament, and for multiparous mothers, marital ambivalence and maternal sensitivity appeared to reflect a compensatory process. These results suggest that parity contributes to explaining how differing family systems influence development during infancy.     

The effects of maternal mood on mother-infant interaction

The effects of depressed mood on mother-infant interaction were studied in 30 mother-infant dyads using the Velten mood induction procedure. It was predicted that maternal depressed mood would induce dysphoria in the infants, disrupt the infants' natural responsiveness to their mothers, and interfere with the mothers' ability to manage the interaction. In addition, it was predicted that such deficits would be the result of depressed maternal mood and not simply due to any change in maternal mood. The results indicated that the infants were sensitive to depressed mood and were less contingently responsive to their mothers than were controls. Also, mothers in the depression induction condition were less successful in eliciting positive responses from their infants than were controls. These results have implications for the development of a helplessness vulnerability in infants and for the two-way direction of effect present in depressed mother-infant dyads.This research was partially funded by NIMH grant MH39283 and a Spelman-Rockefeller Seed Grant awarded to Michael O'Hara. We gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Joan Blackwood, Nancy Clift, Lynda Field, Darla Hauf, Randy Ross, Jane Ugland, and Jim Vincent in the data collection. We also thank Richard R. Hurtig, John F. Knutson, Donald K. Routh, Robert A. Forsyth, and Carolyn E. Cutrona for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.     

Infants' vagal regulation in the still-face paradigm is related to dyadic coordination of mother-infant interaction

The authors investigated relations between mother-infant dyadic coordination and infants' physiological responses. Mothers (N=73) and 3-month-old male and female infants were observed in the still-face paradigm, and mothers' and infants' affective states were coded at 1-s intervals. Synchrony and levels of matching between mother-infant affective states were computed, and infants' heart rate and vagal tone were measured. Infants showed increased negative affect and heart rate and decreased vagal tone during mothers' still-face, indicating physiological regulation of distress. Infants who did not suppress vagal tone during the still-face (nonsuppressors) showed less positive affect, higher reactivity and vagal suppression in normal play and reunion episodes, and lower synchrony in normal play with mothers. The results indicate that infants' physiological regulation in social interaction differs in relation to dyadic coordination of affective behaviors.     

Perturbation of Japanese mother-infant habitual interactions in the double video paradigm and relationship to maternal playfulness

Double video paradigm (DVP) studies have found contradictory evidence regarding the young infants' ability to discriminate their mother's 'replay' image from 'live'. This study examined the hypothesis that 4-month-old infants whose mothers showed high-levels-of-playful-behavior are more likely to discriminate social contingency in the DVP. We also examined the relationships between the infants' DVP behaviors and mothers' free-play behaviors at home with their 3-month-old infants. The results supported our hypothesis. Further, when the mothers' behaviors were reduced to playful companion (PC) and sensitive support (SS) by a principal component analysis, the level of PC was closely related to the infants' detection of social contingency, but SS was not. The different functions of mothers' 'playfulness' and 'sensitivity' in communication with their infants are discussed.     

Patterns of mother-infant interaction and attachment: A cluster-analytic approach

This study examined stability and change in patterns of mother-infant interaction between 5 and 10 months and their relation to attachment security at 18 months. Cluster analysis was used to identify patterns of dyadic interaction. There was significant, but not substantial, stability in cluster membership from 5 to 10 months. For females, being in the most optimal cluster at 5 months related to subsequent attachment security, regardless of the 10-month pattern of interaction. For males, who were significantly more likely to be insecure than females, insecure attachment was predicted by negative change from 5 to 10 months (moving from a more optimal to a less optimal cluster).     

The effects of a teaching-modeling intervention on early mother-infant reciprocity

This study investigated the effects of a teaching and modeling intervention on the development of early reciprocity and maternal self-confidence between black low-income primiparous mothers and their newborn infants. The sample included 20 mothers who had an uneventful pregnancy, labor, delivery, and postpartum course. Infants were healthy, full-term, singleton, and bottle-fed. Mothers in the experimental group received a teaching session in which the investigator discussed and modeled caregiver behaviors which elicit interactive behaviors and skills of the infant. State control, response to stress, motoric processes, and interaction processes were discussed. On pretest, no significant differences were found between the control and experimental groups on any variable. At posttest, statistically significant differences were found between the two groups on assessment of the mother-infant sensitivity scale. No significant differences were found between the treatment and the control groups on the Mother's Assessment of the Behavior of her Infant (MABI) or the Self-Confidence scores.     

The interaction approach to early intervention

A brief summary of research, supportive of the idea that quality of parent-infant interaction has a powerful effect on infant development, introduces an early intervention model based on that proposition. Also, central to the interaction model is the knowledge that (1) parent and infant both contribute to what happens between them and that (2) a multitude of factors, environmental and internal to parent and infant, affect the parent, the infant, and their interaction. Ten sets of principles and strategies that convey the essence of the interaction model constitute the core of this article. The principles and strategies address the importance of identifying sources of support and stress in the family, of developing relationships with both parents, and of supporting positive interactions between parents and the infant's siblings. The limitations of this model are also addressed, especially in cases where the parent is the primary risk factor. The infant's exposure to nurturing adults in quality day care programs and a more clinical approach with the parent and infant, such as Selma Fraiberg's model, may be more effective with such families.     

The role of oxytocin in early mother-infant interactions: Variations in maternal affect attunement

The aim of the present research was to investigate the relationship between oxytocin and maternal affect attunement, as well as the role of affect attunement in the relationship between oxytocin and infant social engagement during early mother-infant interactions. Forty-three mother-infant dyads participated in the present study when infants were 4 months. They were observed during (1) a situation where no communication took place and (2) a natural interaction between mother and infant. During this procedure, three saliva samples from mothers and their infants were collected to determine their levels of oxytocin at different time points. Maternal affect attunement (maintaining attention, warm sensitivity) and infant interactive behaviors (gaze, positive, and negative affect) were coded during the natural interaction. Results indicated that overall maternal oxytocin functioning was negatively related to her warm sensitivity, while infant oxytocin reactivity together with maternal affect attunement were associated with infant positive social engagement with their mothers. Specifically, infant oxytocin reactivity was significantly related to their gazes at mother, but only for infants of highly attuned mothers. These results point to the complex role oxytocin plays in parent-infant interactions while emphasizing the need to analyze both overall oxytocin functioning as well as reactivity as different indices of human affiliative behavior.     

The interaction between gaze direction and facial expressions in newborns

The ability to decode facial expressions is an important component of social interaction and functioning. This ability is even more fundamental early in life, prior to the development of verbal communication. However, it is still unclear whether newborns can detect, discriminate and process facial expressions, and, if so, what the mechanisms underlying this ability are. In this study, we extend the investigation of perceived emotional expression by manipulating gaze direction with different facial expressions. Specifically, newborns were presented with faces displaying neutral, fearful, or happy facial expressions accompanied with direct or averted gaze, and tested in a visual preference paradigm. Four experiments were conducted in which different combinations of expression and gaze were used. However, only in the fourth experiment did newborns show a visual preference for a specific emotional display; they looked significantly longer at a happy face than a neutral one only when both were accompanied with direct gaze. These results provide support for the advantage of happy facial expressions in the development of a face processing system and suggest that this preference reflects experience acquired during the first few days after birth.     

Maternal sensory sensitivity, mother-infant 9-month interaction, infant attachment status: predictors of mother-toddler interaction at 24 months

At 24-months of age, toddlers (N=62) and their mothers were observed in a free-play session to determine the contribution of (a) maternal sensory sensitivity to positive and negative infant facial expressions as measured in a signal detection task at 6 months, (b) maternal behavior and affect, infant behavior and affect, and dyadic interaction at 9 months, and (c) infant attachment status at 12 months in predicting maternal, toddler, and dyadic measures at 24 months. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that over and above early maternal behavior, which was predictive of later maternal behavior at 24 months, sensory sensitivity to the positive infant expression at 6 months predicted maternal behavior at 24 months and sensory sensitivity to both the positive and negative expression was associated with later maternal affect. Infant attachment status emerged as the variable which predicted toddler behavior and dyadic interaction at 24 months.