Maternal anxiety symptoms and mother–infant self‐ and interactive contingency

Abstract

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the interaction toward interactive contingencies that were both heightened (vigilant) in some modalities and lowered (withdrawn) in others; both may be efforts to adapt to stress.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.

Parental embodied mentalizing: how the nonverbal dance between parents and infants predicts children’s socio-emotional functioning

“…As stated earlier, previous work has successfully established the usefulness of investigating facial and vocal patterns to shed light on the parent-infant relationship (e.g., Beebe et al, 2011;Malloch, 1999). The aim of the current undertaking is to evaluate whether whole-body movement -as a distinct communicative modality -conveys meaningful information about mental states and interpersonal interactive processes.…”

“…For this reason, PEM focuses on analysis of the parent's and the infant's bodily movements during social interaction, that is, movements of the entire body and all its parts, including limbs, torso, and head. Such an approach not only complements, then, the three current, verbally based, approaches to measuring parental mentalizing, but also the "head-centric" focus -on head, gaze, or vocal exchanges -of other strategies for characterizing parent-infant interaction that have proven developmentally informative (see Beebe, 2000;Beebe et al, 2011;Boone & Cunningham, 1998;Gergely & Watson, 1996;Kaye & Fogel, 1980).…”

Mother-Infant Emotion Regulation at Three Months: The Role of Maternal Anxiety, Depression and Parenting Stress

“…According to others, there is no difference between the sensitiveness of anxious mothers and that of control mothers [16]. Using a microanalytic approach, anxious mother/infant interaction is shown to be characterized by little emotion coordination and by mutual hypervigilance at the level of gaze [17]. To our knowledge there is only one study which has considered the relationship between maternal anxiety and emotion regulation in the first year, and it revealed exaggerated behavior in the mother [18].…”

Partnership Cultures: Beginning at the Beginning through Parenting

“…1 http://pubs.lib.umn.edu/ijps/vol3/iss2/1 expectations of children, while others need to learn to regulate themselves (Bridgett, Burt, Edwards & Deater-Deckard, 2015). Depression, anxiety, and addictions affect parenting and may lead to emotional dysregulation and stress in children (Beebe, et al,2011;Brennen, et al, 2000;Field, 2010;Tronick & Reck, 2009). Poverty, similar to abuse and neglect, negatively affects brain development.…”