Distressed Mothers and Their Infants Use a Less Efficient Timing Mechanism in Creating Expectancies of Each Other’s Looking Patterns

Abstract

The prediction of events and the creation of expectancies about their time course is a crucial aspect of an infant's mental life, but temporal mechanisms underlying these predictions are obscure. Scalar timing, in which the ratio of mean durations to their standard deviations is held constant, enables a person to use an estimate of the mean for its standard deviation. It is one efficient mechanism that may facilitate predictability and the creation of expectancies in mother-infant interaction. We illustrate this mechanism with the dyadic gaze rhythm of mother and infant looking at and looking away from each other's faces. Two groups of Hi- and Lo-Distress mothers were created using self-reported depression, anxiety, self-criticism and childhood experiences. Lo-Distress infants (controls) used scalar timing 100% of the time, about double that of Hi-Distress infants. Lo-Distress mothers used scalar timing about nine times as much as Hi-Distress mothers. The diminished use of scalar timing patterns in Hi-Distress mothers and infants may make the anticipation of each other's gaze patterns more difficult for both partners.

Infant face interest is associated with voice information and maternal psychological health

“…The drive to engage in rewarding social interactions may explain the association between maternal psychological health and infant face interest. Social interactions between infants and their mothers may be impaired if mothers report maternal mood symptoms (e.g., Beebe, Badalamenti, Jaffe, Feldstein, Marquette, Helbraun et al, 2008;Edhborg et al, 2001;Field, Healy, Goldstein, Perry, Bendell, Schanberg et al, 1988;Murray et al, 1996) and this may, therefore, drive infants to seek rewarding social interactions from others. Thus, we speculate infants of mothers with maternal mood symptoms might increase attention to faces paired with voices in order to facilitate a social interaction with their mother and stranger, the drive for which is not present when faces are presented alone.…”

Annual Research Review: All mothers are not created equal: neural and psychobiological perspectives on mothering and the importance of individual differences

“…Mothers with postpartum depression tend to be more intrusive and irritated, respond less sensitively, contingently and more negatively to their infants and demonstrate disrupted patterns of communication compared with mothers without postpartum depression (Beebe et al, 2008; Cohn, Campbell, Matias, & Hopkins, 1990; Field, Healy, Goldstein, & Guthertz 1990; Field et al, 1985; Fleming, Ruble, Flett, & Shaul, 1988; Paris et al, 2009; Righetti‐Veltema, Conne‐Perréard, Bousquet, & Manzano, 2002, for a review see Field, 2009). When observed later in the postpartum period, depressed dyads (i.e., mother–baby pairs) exhibit reduced mutual attentiveness, vocal and visual communications, touching interactions or smiling compared with non‐postpartum depression dyads (Field et al, 1990; Fleming et al, 1988; Righetti‐Veltema et al, 2002).…”

Common and divergent psychobiological mechanisms underlying maternal behaviors in non-human and human mammals

“…These studies show that mothers with postpartum depression tend to be more intrusive and irritated, and respond with less sensitivity and contingency to their babies. Depressed mothers are also likely than non-depression mothers to respond more negatively to their infant and have disrupted patterns of communication with them (Beebe et al, 2008; Chung, McCollum, Elo, Lee, & Culhane, 2004; Feldman & Eidelman, 2007; Herrera, Reissland, & Shepherd, 2004; Milgrom, Westley, & Gemmill, 2004; Paris, Bolton, & Weinberg, 2009; Righetti-Veltema, Conne-Perreard, Bousquet, & Manzano, 2002). Later during the postpartum period, depressed mother-infant dyads exhibit reduced mutual attentiveness, vocal and visual communications, touching interactions or smiling compared to postpartum non-depressed dyads (Field, 1990; Fleming, Ruble, Flett, & Shaul, 1988; Righetti-Veltema et al, 2002).…”