Mom feels what her child feels: thermal signatures of vicarious autonomic response while watching children in a stressful situation

Abstract

Maternal attunement with an infant's emotional states is thought to represent a distinctive feature of the human primary bond. It implies the mother's ability of empathizing with her child in order to fulfil the child's needs in an immediate and appropriate manner. Thus, it is particularly involved in stressful situations. By assuming that maternal attunement embodies a direct sharing of physiological responses with the child, we compared the autonomic response of mothers observing their own distressed child with those of other women observing an unknown child involved in an ecological distressful condition (mishap paradigm). The hypothesis was that the adult's response was more attuned with the child's response in the former group than in the latter group. The autonomic response was non-invasively evaluated through the recording of the thermal facial imprints by means of thermal infrared (IR) imaging. Nine mother-child dyads and 9 woman-unknown child dyads were studied. We found marked similarities between the facial temperature dynamics of women and children along the experimental procedure, thus providing evidence for a direct emotional sharing within the adult-child dyad. The evidence for common dynamics in the time course of the temperatures was assessed through correlation analysis and, nevertheless, resulted stronger in the mother-child dyads than in the other women-child dyads. In addition, temporal analysis showed a faster response in mothers than in other women, thus confirming our study hypothesis. Besides confirming the extraordinary capability of IR imaging to preserve ecological context in the study of social or non-verbal interactions, these results suggest that maternity appears to potentiate the emotional attunement with the child. Although based on preliminary results, this study opens new perspectives in the study of the factors modulating vicarious socio-emotional processes.

Genetic predispositions and parental bonding interact to shape adults’ physiological responses to social distress

“…Temperature fluctuations also indicate participants’ promptness to action. Previous studies have shown significant decreases in nose skin temperature in response to stress-eliciting stimuli in adults, infants, and non-human primates (Kuraoka & Nakamura, 2011; Ioannou et al, 2013; Manini et al, 2013). Therefore, we expected to find only in A carriers exposed to poorer parental behaviors a greater decrease in nose temperature in response to prolonged stress-eliciting stimuli, underlying poorer coping abilities, but we expected a greater increase in nose temperature in response to the same stimuli in A carriers exposed to better parental behaviors.…”

“…Here we focus on Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) activation to investigate how gene*environment interaction moderates automatic physiological development. We evaluate heart rate changes and peripheral skin temperature (on the nose) to better assess the activation of both the parasympathetic and sympathetic branches of the ANS (Ioannou et al, 2013; Kothgassner et al, 2016; Manini et al, 2013; Quas et al, 2000). …”

The effects of maternal respiratory sinus arrhythmia and behavioral engagement on mother‐child physiological coregulation

“…Prior research suggests that physiological synchrony between parents and children is normative (Lunkenheimer, Tiberio, Buss, Boker, & Timpe, 2015). For example, mothers' and children's thermal signatures, a measure of autonomic function, are synchronous while mothers watch their children perform emotionally challenging tasks (Ebisch et al, 2012;Manini et al, 2013). Synchrony in physiological states has been linked to greater behavioral coordination between parents and children; for example, mothers and infants tend to show greater coordination in heart rate during periods of behavioral synchrony, such as gaze sharing (Feldman, Magori-Cohen, Galili, Singer, & Louzoun, 2011).…”

Empathy for the Stressed

“…These researchers found that mothers exposed to their child after the child experienced a stressor exhibited similar facial thermal activity as the child, suggesting autonomic resonance between mother and child even after the offset of the stressful situation. In a related study, these authors found that mothers showed greater and faster contagious responses with their children than women with children who were not their own (Manini et al 2013). Waters and colleagues (2014) followed up on these findings by examining the influence of a mother's stress response on an infant's stress responses after the stressor was terminated.…”