Tactile stimulation as a component of social interchange: New interpretations for the still‐face effect

Abstract

Three experiments were conducted to isolate the effect of touch as a component of mother-infant interaction in the still-face (SF) paradigm and to determine the impact of adult touch on infant affect and attention. In Expt 1 it was established that the amount of maternal touching which occurred during the normal periods of the SF procedure was greater than 65 per cent for 3-, 6-, and 9-month-olds. In Expts 2 (cross-sectional) and 3 (longitudinal), the SF no-touch period was compared with a SF period where mothers could touch their 3to 9-month-olds. Infants who received touch while their mothers were still-faced smiled more, grimaced less, and were more content relative to infants receiving the standard SF, no-touch procedure. Adult touch proved to be an interactive component which, in isolation, reduced the SF effect by eliciting infants' positive affect and directing their attention toward the mothers' hands. The relevance of this work for better comprehension of early infant social interaction and new interpretations of the SF effect are discussed.Recently, face-to-face interactions have been used to study the infant's social communication (Kaye, 1982), emotional expressions and responses to stressful episodes (Field, Vega-Lahr, Scafidi & Goldstein, 1986), and the development of social expectations (Cohn & Tronick, 1983). The investigation of interactions between a mother and her infant permits entry into an intimate dyad where the responses of both partners can be systematically examined. These interactions provide insight into communication patterns and infant cognitive competence. Although mothers usually present their infants with facial, vocal and tactile expressions during normal, free-play, face-to-face interactions, researchers typically analyse maternal facial and vocal behaviours and ignore the mothers' tactile behaviour. Indeed, models of early social interchange derived from such naturalistic

Maternal touch and maternal child-directed speech: effects of depressed mood in the postnatal period

“…Infants' responsiveness (behavioural, emotional and physiological) develops in the context of an interactive relationship, with touch playing an important role (Stack & Muir, 1990;Stack & LePage, 1996;Stack & Arnold, 1998). Infants of mothers with depressed mood, in contrast to infants of non-depressed mothers, touched their own skin more often, which can be interpreted as a self-comforting behaviour that compensates for the lack of positive touch from their mothers.…”

“…Touch elicits positive affect, reduces negative affect, and modifies overall responsiveness in infants as early as 3 months of age (Stack & Muir, 1990Pelaez-Nogueras et al, 1996;Stack & Arnold, 1998). According to Hertenstein (2002), through touch, mothers and infants can exchange perceptions, thoughts and feelings, which promote emotional and non-emotional or informative communication.…”

Tactile Perception in Adults with Autism: a Multidimensional Psychophysical Study

“…Touch input from parents is ubiquitous during normal parent-infant interactions (Stack & Muir, 1990), has significant effects on social attention within the infant-parent dyad (Gusella, Muir, & Tronick, 1988;Roggman & Woodson, 1989), and shapes infants' affective and attentional responses in formative early social interaction (Stack & Muir, 1992). An early developmental abnormality in processing this information is likely to have far-reaching socio-cognitive effects throughout the lifespan.…”

Emotion Regulation Via Maternal Touch

“…Contact is used to modulate an extant negative action tendency in the former (Stack & Muir, 1990, 1992, whereas contact is used to amplify an existing positive action tendency in the latter (Peláez-Nogueras et al, 1997;Peláez-Nogueras et al, 1996). In these studies, the dependent variables focus solely on the expressive component of emotionality.…”