Relations Between Maternal-Contingent-Responsiveness, Infant Brain, and Infant Social Behavior Over the First Year of Life

• In Event: 1-196 - Learning the Social World: Contingency in Infant-caregiver Interactions Influences Infant Brain and Behavioral Development

Integrative Statement

Empirical research suggests that early caregiving experiences may “program” infant brain development to support emerging social behavior. Delineating a neural mechanistic pathway from social-experience to social-behavior has implications for promoting healthy social functioning and for understanding cases of social impairment. However, infants’ real-time neural responses elicited during caregiver-infant interactions are little explored or understood. The present study explores the ways in which the early caregiving environment may shape the infant brain and associated development of social understanding and behavior over the first year of life. In particular, we examine the role of the contingent structure of caregiver behaviors as they arise within micro-analytically coded face-to face mother-infant interactions (i.e. the extent to which maternal behaviors are temporally matched to, and contingent upon infants’ changing cues and states).
New data from our longitudinal study will be presented. 63 infants and their mothers were assessed 4 months in the home and in lab at 10 months of age (data processing is currently ongoing). At 4 months, mother-infant face-to-face interactions were collected in a 3-minute free-play and microanalytically coded for maternal contingent responsiveness. At 10 months in lab, infants’ EEG was recorded in ‘resting’ state and during face-to-face interactions with their mother in conditions that systematically manipulated the extent to which the mother responded contingently to the infant. Infants’ empathic and prosocial behaviors were also assessed 10 months of age via behavioral observations of an experimenter simulating pain and maternal report questionnaire.
Analyses aimed to characterize (a) how infant brain development is influenced by experience of contingent maternal responsiveness over the first year of life; (b) whether differential brain development is associated with individual differences in infants’ emerging social capacities.
Results provide support for the idea that contingent-maternal-responsiveness influences infant brain activity to in turn support the development of infant social behavior. Future research directions will be discussed – including the utility of analyzing infants’ real-time EEG responses during caregiver-infant interactions.

Authors

• Tahl Frenkel, Ziama Arkin Infancy Institute
  Presenting Author

• Sofie Rousseau, Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, Ziama Arkin Infancy Institute
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lindsay C Bowman, University of California Davis
  Non-Presenting Author