The functional architecture of mother-infant communication, and the development of infant social expressiveness in the first two months

Abstract

By two-three months, infants show active social expressions during face-to-face interactions. These interactions are important, as they provide the foundation for later emotional regulation and cognition, but little is known about how infant social expressiveness develops. We considered two different accounts. One emphasizes the contingency of parental responsiveness, regardless of its form; the other, the functional architecture account, emphasizes the preparedness of both infants and parents to respond in specific ways to particular forms of behaviour in their partner. We videotaped mother-infant interactions from one to nine weeks, and analysed them with a micro-analytic coding scheme. Infant social expressiveness increased through the nine-week period, particularly after 3 weeks. This development was unrelated to the extent of maternal contingent responsiveness, even to infant social expressions. By contrast, specific forms of response that mothers used preferentially for infant social expressions-mirroring, marking with a smile- predicted the increase in these infant behaviours over time. These results support a functional architecture account of the perceptual and behavioural predispositions of infants and parents that allow young infants to capitalize on relatively limited exposure to specific parental behaviours, in order to develop important social capacities.

Two different mirror neuron networks: The sensorimotor (hand) and limbic (face) pathways

“…In contrast, mouth MNs must rely on a different network maturational process that is highly canalized during development (Ferrari et al, 2013) and relies on the interaction between the infant and the caregiver in the early phases of development. Infants, in fact, cannot see their own face, however their mother/caregiver provide continuous feedback to their facial expressions and emotional state, often imitating them and thus reinforcing the forms and the emotional content of their behavior (Murray et al, 2016). Mouth MNs could therefore be formed within a context of communication and emotional exchange.…”

Social deontics: A nano‐level approach to human power play

“…While infants exhibit an overall preference for positive social expressions, such as smiles (Leppänen & Nelson, ), their parents have the propensity to provide mirroring responses just to these types of positive social expressions by the infants (Murray et al, ). In this way, the infants' motivation to become socially engaged is reinforced by the infants developing expectations for the intrinsically rewarding experiences of being smiled at, which leads them to increase their own social expressiveness (Murray et al, , p. 6). Thus, at 2 months, infants accomplish interactional bids through smiles and eye‐contact (Rochat, ).…”

Re‐examination of Oostenbroek et al. (2016): evidence for neonatal imitation of tongue protrusion

“…Several steps were aimed at lessening such confusions” (Meltzoff & Moore, , p. 87, which lists the procedures). Moreover, young infants develop expectancies about face‐to‐face interaction with adults, especially their mothers (Messinger et al., ; Murray et al., ; Tronick, Als, Adamson, Wise, & Brazelton, ). These contingencies can interfere with a strictly imitative response (Meltzoff & Moore, ).…”

“…When Meltzoff and Moore () conducted a three‐visit study, they kept the parents blind to the gestures, reducing noise in the data. (The effects of parental training and contingent responding are interesting to investigate in their own right; Murray et al., . )…”