Consistency in Maternal Responsiveness across Early Infancy Predicts Later Social Behaviors

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

Integrative Statement

Mother-infant interaction plays a fundamental role in the development of social behavior. There is increased interest in capturing the intricate and dynamic nature of such dyadic interactions. Within mother-infant interactions there is constant turn-taking: the mother contingently responds to the infant’s behavior and vice versa. Exposure to repeated contingent exchanges are thought to provide a foundation for more complex social behaviors. However, there is still much that is unknown about which parts of the dyadic interaction are imperative for the promotion of healthy social outcomes later in life. In the current longitudinal study, mother-infant interactions were examined at both 5 and 9 months of age and consistency in matching behaviors and synchrony was examined in relation to later social behavior at 9 months of age. Specifically, mother-infant dyads (N = 62, 31 female) were observed during a 2-min face-to-face interaction period when infants were 5 (M = 5.03, SD = .27) and 9 (M = 9.04, SD = .25) months old. Microanalytic (second-by-second) coding of mothers’ and infants’ behaviors was conducted using the Infant and Caregiver Engagement Phases. Mother-infant matching on social positive engagement (i.e., gaze with positive affect) and social monitoring (i.e., gaze with neutral affect) and mother-infant synchrony was computed. Using a median split, mother-infant dyads who were above the median at both 5 and 9 months were characterized as consistently high (N = 19) while those below the median were characterized as consistently low (N = 16). At 9 months, social behavior was examined in the Lab-TAB Peek-a-Boo task and an imitation task. It was found that infants and mothers who display high consistency in matching on social positive engagement [t(34) = -2.923, p < .05); Figure 1, left] and synchrony [t(32 = -2.171, p < .05); Figure 1, right] displayed higher levels of social contingency during the Peek-a-Boo task compared to mother-infant dyads who displayed low consistency suggesting that being consistently low on measures of social positive engagement matching and synchrony can lower infants’ ability the detect social contingencies later in life. Additionally, consistently high levels of matching on social positive engagement were related to higher levels of social positivity [t(35) = -4.385, p < .001); Figure 2, left] and imitation [t(35) = -1.991, p = .054); Figure 2, right] compared to those with consistently low levels of matching on social positive engagement suggesting that matching on social positive engagement plays a different role than synchrony on different social behaviors. Consistency of matching on social monitoring did not relate to either 9-month Peek-a-Boo or imitation measures suggesting that later social behavior is affected not by how much a mother and infant look at each other but how much positivity they share in their interactions and how much they synchronize with one another across time. Overall, the current study suggests that being consistently low in matching on social positive engagement and synchrony can have detrimental effects on infants’ social development and that these behaviors may be ideal targets for potential interventions.

Author

• Bethany Reeb-Sutherland, Florida International University
  Presenting Author