Maternal intrusion: Its roots and consequences

Abstract

Behind an intrusive mother’s view of her actual child lies a disproportionate, hidden desire to revive an ideal relationship with a perfect mother. The resulting image of an idealized child then becomes a strategic aspect of the mother’s own identity, representing an idealized figure from her own past. As the mother’s idealization is disturbed by the reality of the child, the mother experiences the situation between herself and the baby as “pathological,” that is, disruptive to her. She then attempts to repair the idealization by resisting any change in the status of her relationship to her child, even as the child grows older. Her rigidity in this regard necessarily excludes a paternal presence that could challenge or change the mother–infant idealized dyad. The mother’s orientation is also contradictory to, and acts as a resistance to, psychoanalytic therapeutic interventions, which aim at any “change.”     

Early manifestations of childhood depression: influences of infant temperament and parental depressive symptoms

In this longitudinal study, 83 parents of infants between 3 and 12 months completed questionnaires assessing demographic information, infant temperament, and maternal depression. When these children were at least 18 months of age, parents completed follow‐up questionnaires assessing toddler temperament and depression‐like symptoms. We were primarily interested in the contributions of infant temperament and maternal depression to toddler depressive problems, and the analytic strategy involved controlling for toddler temperament in order to isolate the influence of infancy characteristics. The findings indicated that lower levels of infant regulatory capacity and greater severity of maternal depression were predictive of toddler depression‐like symptoms. Moderator effects of infant temperament were also examined, with the negative affectivity * maternal depression interaction emerging as significant. Follow‐up analyses indicated that the risk for early manifestations of depression was attenuated for children with lower negative affectivity in infancy and parents who reported lower levels of their own depressive symptoms; conversely, children exhibiting higher infant negative emotionality had higher levels of depression‐like symptoms as toddlers, regardless of their parents' level of depression. The present findings further suggest that parental depressive symptoms need not be ‘clinically significant’ to predict toddler affective problems. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Expression of negative affect during face‐to‐face interaction: a double video study of young infants' sensitivity to social contingency

The purpose was to assess infants' sensitivity to social contingency, taking affective state into account, during face‐to‐face interaction with the mother in a double video set‐up. Infants' behaviour during three sequences of live face‐to‐face interaction were compared to two sequences where the interaction between the infant and the mother was set out of phase, by presenting either the infant or the mother with a replay of their partners' behaviour during earlier live interaction. We found a significant negative correlation between the infant's degree of negative affect and the average time of looking at the mother during the live sequences. A median split was calculated to separate the infants into a high‐negative‐affect group and a low‐negative‐affect group on the basis of their emotional responses during the experiment. The low‐negative‐affect infants looked significantly more at their mothers than other foci during the live but not the replay sequences, while the high‐negative‐affect infants did not show this difference. The results suggest that 2–4‐month old infants are able to distinguish between experimental distortion of contingent aspects in live and replay sequences, but that this effect of the replay condition may not be shown by moderate to highly distressed infants. Our findings underline the importance of taking infants' emotional state into account in experiments intended to assess their capacity for intersubjective communication. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

书面语言的提前学习对幼儿脑电α波的影响

本研究以脑电α波为分析指标探讨提前学习书面语言对幼儿大脑皮层相应区域发育的促进作用。结果表明对学龄前幼儿提前进行书面语言学习可以使幼儿脑电α波超前发展，本结果提示提前进行书面语言学习对幼儿大脑皮层相应脑区的发育与成熟有促进作用。     

Development of category formation for faces differing by age in 9‐ to 12‐month‐olds: An effect of experience with infant faces

We examined category formation for faces differing in age in 9‐ and 12‐month‐olds, and the influence of exposure to infant faces on such ability. Infants were familiarized with adult or infant faces, and then tested with a novel exemplar from the familiarized category paired with a novel exemplar from a novel category (Experiment 1). Both age groups formed discrete categories of adult and infant faces, but exposure to infant faces in everyday life did not modulate performance. The same task was conducted with child versus infant faces (Experiment 2). Whereas 9‐month‐olds preferred infant faces after familiarization with child faces, but not child faces after familiarization with infant faces, 12‐month‐olds formed discrete categories of child and infant faces. Moreover, more exposure to infant faces correlated with higher novel category preference scores when infants were familiarized with infant faces in 12‐month‐olds, but not 9‐month‐olds. The 9‐month‐old asymmetry did not reflect spontaneous preference for infant over child faces (Experiment 3). These findings indicate that 9‐ and 12‐month‐olds can form age‐based categories of faces. The ability of 12‐month‐olds to form separate child and infant categories suggests that they have a more exclusive representation of face age, one that may be influenced by prior experience with infant faces.     

Adding “Circle of Security – Parenting” to treatment as usual in three Swedish infant mental health clinics. Effects on parents’ internal representations and quality of parent‐infant interaction

This study presents effects of adding Circle of Security‐Parenting (COS ‐P) to an already established comprehensive therapeutic model for early parent‐child intervention in three Swedish infant mental health (IMH ) clinics. Parents’ internal representations and quality of parent‐infant interaction were studied in a clinical sample comprised of 52 parent‐infant dyads randomly allocated to two comparable groups. One group consisted of 28 dyads receiving treatment as usual (TAU ) supplemented with COS ‐P in a small group format, and another group of 24 dyads receiving TAU only. Assessments were made at baseline (T1), 6 months after inclusion (T2) and 12 months after inclusion (T3). Changes over time were explored in 42 dyads. In the COS ‐P group, the proportion of balanced representations, as assessed with Working Model of the Child Interview (WMCI ), significantly increased between T1 and T3. Further, the proportion of emotionally available interactions, as assessed with Emotional Availability scales (EA ), significantly increased over time in the COS ‐P group. Improvements in the TAU ‐group were close to significant. Limitations of the study are mainly related to the small sample size. Strength is the real world character of the study, where COS ‐P was implemented in a clinical context not otherwise adapted to research. We conclude by discussing the value of supplementing TAU with COS ‐P in IMH treatment.     

The effect of mother-infant skin-to-skin contact on plasma cortisol and β-endorphin concentrations in preterm newborns

The aim of this study was to assess the effect of mother-infant skin-to-skin contact on plasma β- endorphin and cortisol concentrations in stable, preterm infants on a newborn intensive care unit. Blood samples were obtained before and at the end of a 20-min period of skin-to-skin contact. Similarly paired samples, obtained at the same times and after the same interval, without skin-to- skin contact, were obtained on another day and served as controls. Both cortisol and β-endorphin concentrations fell significantly after the skin-to-skin session (cortisol: geometric mean change 66%, p=0.008; β-endorphin: geometric mean change 74%, p=0.002). There was also a significant fall in cortisol levels during the control session (geometric mean change 78%, p=0.02), in contrast to β-endorphin levels, in which there was no significant change. Analysis of variance showed that the fall in β-endorphin, but not the fall in cortisol, during the skin-to-skin session was significant when compared with the control session. These results emphasize the hormonal responsiveness of the preterm newborn to relatively minor interventions. We conclude that maternal skin-to-skin contact results in a significant reduction in circulating β-endorphin in the newborn; there was no evidence of any adverse effect.     

Moment-to-moment changes in feeling moved match changes in closeness,tears, goosebumps,and warmth: time series analyses

Feeling moved or touched can be accompanied by tears, goosebumps, and sensations of warmth in the centre of the chest. The experience has been described frequently, but psychological science knows little about it. We propose that labelling one’s feeling as being moved or touched is a component of a social-relational emotion that we term kama muta (its Sanskrit label). We hypothesise that it is caused by appraising an intensification of communal sharing relations. Here, we test this by investigating people’s moment-to-moment reports of feeling moved and touched while watching six short videos. We compare these to six other sets of participants’ moment-to-moment responses watching the same videos: respectively, judgements of closeness (indexing communal sharing), reports of weeping, goosebumps, warmth in the centre of the chest, happiness, and sadness. Our eighth time series is expert ratings of communal sharing. Time series analyses show strong and consistent cross-correlations of feeling moved and touched and closeness with each other and with each of the three physiological variables and expert-rated communal sharing – but distinctiveness from happiness and sadness. These results support our model.