The Role of Maternal Mirroring in Early Social Development: Elucidation Via Studying Infant Facial Anomaly

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

Integrative Statement

Introduction: Parent-infant social interactions start early in development, and from as early as two months of life infants show active communicative expressions. How this social capacity develops remains largely to be studied. Recent literature has highlighted maternal mirroring of infant expressions, an intuitive parenting response, as a powerful promoter of early infant social behaviour. Evidence is, however, sparse concerning the conditions under which this response occurs in the first two months and its developmental sequelae. To investigate these questions, we compared the development of mother-infant interactions between a sample where an infant facial anomaly, namely cleft lip/palate (CLP), posed a naturally occurring challenge to the maternal mirroring of early infant communicative expressions, and a normal, unaffected, comparison sample.
Naïve observers have been shown to be able to accurately rate facial expressions in photographs of CLP infants. These observers have, however, been found to focus greater visual attention on the mouth of CLP faces compared to typical faces, while mothers of CLP infants, during naturalistic interactions, have been shown to gaze at their infant’s mouth less than mothers of typical infants. Given the perceptual prerequisites for imitative responses, we explored how these gaze patterns affected early maternal mirroring responses.
Aims of the Study: Social behaviours of CLP and control infants were compared, investigating the role of maternal mirroring, and maternal gaze patterns.
Materials and Methods: Twenty healthy infants, and 9 CLP infants were filmed fortnightly, between 1-9 weeks of age, interacting with their mothers, who wore eye-tracking glasses. A micro-analytic coding scheme was used to capture maternal and infant behaviours, including infant social expressions, and maternal mirroring. Maternal fixation durations on the infants’ eyes, and mouth were calculated.
Results: Infants with cleft lip, during the first two months of life, showed communicative expressions, but the rate of development of these early social behaviours was slower than in comparison infants. This group difference was found to be mediated by the lower rate of mirroring of infant expressions found in mothers of infants born with cleft lip. The reduced use of this kind of maternal response was, in turn, partly accounted for by the reduced gaze to the infant’s mouth found in mothers of CLP infants. The clarity of infant social expressions (indexed by cleft severity), and maternal self-blame regarding the cleft were also found to influence maternal mirroring.
Conclusions: The lower social communication of CLP infants, compared to typical infants, appears related to lower maternal mirroring rates in the former group. CLP infants’ mothers’ visual avoidance of their infants’ mouth affected their ability to mirror infant early communication, also influenced by malformation severity and maternal feelings of self-blame.
In relation to previous findings on typical populations, the structure of parent-infant interactions was found to be generally robust, but sensitive to specific variations in interactants’ appearance and behaviour. Parental mirroring appears critical in infant social development, likely supported by the mirror neuron system and underlying differences in infant behaviour related to clinical as well as, possibly, cultural influences.

Authors

• Leonardo De Pascalis, University of Liverpool
  Presenting Author

• Laura Bozicevic, University of Liverpool
  Non-Presenting Author

• Pier Francesco Ferrari, University of Parma
  Non-Presenting Author

• Kyla Vaillancourt, Kings College London
  Non-Presenting Author

• Louise Dalton, John Radcliffe Hospital
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tim Goodacre, John Radcliffe Hospital
  Non-Presenting Author

• Bhismadev Chakrabarti, University of Reading
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sarah Bicknell, University of Reading
  Non-Presenting Author

• Peter Cooper, University of Reading
  Non-Presenting Author

• Alan Stein, University of Oxford
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lynne Murray, University of Reading
  Non-Presenting Author