Associations of maternal self-report anxiety-related symptoms with mother–infant 4-month face-to-face play were investigated in 119 pairs. Attention, affect, spatial orientation, and touch were coded from split-screen videotape on a 1-s time base. Self- and interactive contingency were assessed by time-series methods. Because anxiety symptoms signal emotional dysregulation, we expected to find atypical patterns of mother–infant interactive contingencies, and of degree of stability/lability within an individual’s own rhythms of behavior (self-contingencies). Consistent with our optimum midrange model, maternal anxiety-related symptoms biased the interaction toward interactive contingencies that were both heightened (vigilant) in some modalities and lowered (withdrawn) in others; both may be efforts to adapt to stress. Infant self-contingency was lowered (“destabilized”) with maternal anxiety symptoms; however, maternal self-contingency was both lowered in some modalities and heightened (overly stable) in others. Interactive contingency patterns were characterized by intermodal discrepancies, confusing forms of communication. For example, mothers vigilantly monitored infants visually, but withdrew from contingently coordinating with infants emotionally, as if mothers were “looking through” them. This picture fits descriptions of mothers with anxiety symptoms as overaroused/fearful, leading to vigilance, but dealing with their fear through emotional distancing. Infants heightened facial affect coordination (vigilance), but dampened vocal affect coordination (withdrawal), with mother’s face—a pattern of conflict. The maternal and infant patterns together generated a mutual ambivalence.

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We tested for an association between adults' attachment style and their regulation of interpersonal physical distance. In Study 1, the stop-distance paradigm was used to derive measures reflecting tolerance of and reactiveness to spatial-intrusion. As predicted, university students who were classified as avoidantly attached (by a 3-category attachment style measure) were less tolerant of close interpersonal physical proximity than were securely attached individuals. Further, they were more reactive to spatial-intrusion by a male (but not a female) adult. In Study 2, we measured the distance that participants chose to sit from an interviewer. Participants' ratings on a 4-category measure were used to classify them into an attachment style and to derive measures of positive self model and positive other model. Results revealed that fearfully avoidant adults were distinguished by their choice of far interpersonal distances. Across subjects, the measure of positive self model made a unique contribution to choice of interpersonal distance, but the measure of positive other model did not. In summary, the data provide evidence of an association between adults' comfort with interpersonal emotional closeness (attachment style) and their comfort with and regulation of interpersonal physical closeness.

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The goals of this article are to discuss the potential risk of children whose parents were traumatized by terror, to present literature on parenting in the context of terror, and to consider factors that may mediate the transmission of trauma-effects from parents to children. Mediators considered are parents' traumatic distress, disturbed parent-child interactions, trauma-related disturbances in parents' thinking, and effects of stress on children's neural functioning. Also discussed are genetic and environmental factors that may moderate the transmission of intergenerational effects and promote children's risk and resilience. Points raised during the discussion are illustrated with segments from interviews of women who were pregnant or gave birth some time after direct exposure to a terror attack. The authors conclude that empirical studies are needed to learn more about the intergenerational transmission of trauma-effects and processes that underlie it. The authors join others in the call to improve evaluation, treatment, and support of trauma victims and their children to stymie the transmission of problems from one generation to the next.

Children of highly anxious mothers are at risk for developmental difficulties including anxiety disorders, and "anxious maternal behavior" and disturbed mother-infant interactions have been implicated in the transmission of risk. In this article, we describe interactions between mothers who are highly anxious and their young infant, based on the few directly relevant observation studies that are available. For more detail, we draw on a broader literature including studies of depressed mothers and developmental theory. Our goal is to describe how the interactions between anxious mothers and infants look to an outside observer and how they may feel to mothers and infants. We also discuss possible bases for their disturbed interactive behavior, the impact that the disturbances can have on both mothers and infants, buffers and risk factors, and routes to short-term intervention. Finally, we suggest directions for future research on maternal anxiety and anxious maternal behavior and the significance of such research for clinicians and researchers.

We report that 90% of women tested in the present study identified their newborns by olfactory cues after only 10 min-1 hr exposure to their infants. All of the women tested recognized their babies' odor after exposure periods greater than 1 hr. The robust results are due in part to the implementation of an initial screening phase in which individuals with obvious olfactory deficits were excluded from the sample. These results suggest that odor cues from newborns are even more salient to their mothers than have been thought heretofore.