The influence of maternal communication on infants’ biobehavioral state

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

Infant-caregiver interactions are characterized by reciprocal and dynamic responses to each other’s nonverbal cues, and biological and physiological rhythms. Mothers communicate rich multimodal information to their infants through their facial expressions, voices, movements, and touch. These signals are critical for helping young infants regulate their bio-behavioral state before they are capable of self-regulation. It remains to be clarified how maternal cues are transmitted to influence infants’ behavior and physiology. This symposium highlights how the quality of the mother’s affective cues, particularly her prosody and melodic voice, contribute to infant-mother synchrony and to the development of infants’ self-regulation. Understanding how maternal communication influences infants’ bio-behavioral state requires examining the moment-by-moment changes in each partners’ behavior and physiology as they dynamically unfold.

Speaker 1 will describe a set of studies revealing that mothers communicate their affective state to their infants via physiological synchrony of parasympathetic nervous system activity, which is facilitated by maternal touch. Speaker 2 will demonstrate how longer durations of maternal singing during face-to-face interactions are associated with greater gaze and affect synchrony. Speaker 3 will discuss how familiar songs capture infants’ attention and reduce their arousal and distress following a stressor. Speaker 4 will introduce a new measure of maternal prosody that uses spectral analysis to quantify maternal vocal modulation and was found to be associated with reductions in infants’ heart rate and distress following a stressor. These studies underscore the importance of maternal communication in the development of attention and emotion regulation in young infants.

Sub Unit

• Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Chair

• Elizabeth daSilva, Indiana University- Purdue University Columbus

Individual Presentations

• Mother-infant affective communication via autonomic physiology - Presenting Author: Sara F Waters, Washington State University; Non-Presenting Author: Tessa West, New York University; Non-Presenting Author: Helena Rose Karnilowicz, University of California - Berkeley; Non-Presenting Author: Maria Amy Gartstein, Washington State University; Non-Presenting Author: Wendy Berry Mendes, University of California, San Francisco

• Singing in tune - being in tune: Relationship between maternal playful singing and interpersonal synchrony - Presenting Author: Gabriela Markova, University of Vienna; Non-Presenting Author: Trinh Nguyen, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT); Non-Presenting Author: Christina Schatz, University of Vienna; Non-Presenting Author: Martina de Eccher, University of Vienna

• Infant physiological and behavioural responses to parental song - Presenting Author: Laura K. Cirelli, University of Toronto; Non-Presenting Author: Haley Kragness, University of Toronto

• Dynamics of caregiver speech acoustic features and infants’ emotion regulation - Presenting Author: Jacek Kolacz, Indiana University - Bloomington; Non-Presenting Author: Elizabeth daSilva, Indiana University- Purdue University Columbus; Non-Presenting Author: Gregory Lewis, Indiana University; Non-Presenting Author: Bennett I Bertenthal, Indiana University - Bloomington; Non-Presenting Author: Stephen Porges, Indiana University