Relations between Automatically Extracted Motion Features and the Quality of Mother-Infant Interactions at 4 and 13 Months

Abstract

Bodily movements are an essential component of social interactions. However, the role of movement in early mother-infant interaction has received little attention in the research literature. The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between automatically extracted motion features and interaction quality in mother-infant interactions at 4 and 13 months. The sample consisted of 19 mother-infant dyads at 4 months and 33 mother-infant dyads at 13 months. The coding system Coding Interactive Behavior (CIB) was used for rating the quality of the interactions. Kinetic energy of upper-body, arms and head motion was calculated and used as segmentation in order to extract coarse- and fine-grained motion features. Spearman correlations were conducted between the composites derived from the CIB and the coarse- and fine-grained motion features. At both 4 and 13 months, longer durations of maternal arm motion and infant upper-body motion were associated with more aversive interactions, i.e., more parent-led interactions and more infant negativity. Further, at 4 months, the amount of motion silence was related to more adaptive interactions, i.e., more sensitive and child-led interactions. Analyses of the fine-grained motion features showed that if the mother coordinates her head movements with her infant's head movements, the interaction is rated as more adaptive in terms of less infant negativity and less dyadic negative states. We found more and stronger correlations between the motion features and the interaction qualities at 4 compared to 13 months. These results highlight that motion features are related to the quality of mother-infant interactions. Factors such as infant age and interaction set-up are likely to modify the meaning and importance of different motion features.

Assessing Sensorimotor Synchronisation in Toddlers Using the Lookit Online Experiment Platform and Automated Movement Extraction

“…Even more promising would be to investigate synchrony between individuals, especially in the context of bonding and responsive caregiving where current human coding measures are labour intensive and lack standardization and predictive validity ( Lotzin et al, 2015 ). Automated solutions have been a goal of social signal processing for a long time ( Chetouani et al, 2017 ) and movement data has emerged as a promising signal ( Egmose et al, 2017 ; López Pérez et al, 2017 ). However, progress has been slow and most methods are not suitable for field data ( Chu et al, 2015 ).…”

Muscle Activity during Passive and Active Movements in Preterm and Full-Term Infants

“…Early stages of sensorimotor system development are also characterized by the occurrence of spontaneous activity. Sensory feedback resulting from interactive (e.g., mother-child [5]) and spontaneous movements is instrumental for coordination of activity in developing sensorimotor circuits, which has been shown to be essential for the proper formation of neuronal networks in early infancy [6][7][8][9]. Alterations of activity patterns (e.g., due to early injuries to the developing brain) may lead to long-lasting neuronal deficits [10][11][12][13].…”