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Infant Affective Responses to Mother's Still Face

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Developmental Psychology2001, Vol. 37, No. 5, 706-714Copyright 2001 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.0012-1649/01/S5.00 DOI: 10.1037//0012-1649.37.5.706Infant Affective Responses to Mother's Still Face at 6 MonthsDifferentially Predict Externalizing and Internalizing Behaviorsat 18 MonthsGinger A. MooreDuke UniversityJeffrey F. Cohn and Susan B. CampbellUniversity of PittsburghThis study investigated (a) stability and change in infant affective responses to the still-face interaction,(b) whether maternal depression affected infant responses, and (c) whether responses to the still-faceinteraction predicted toddler problem behaviors. Infants (63 girls and 66 boys) of European Americanmothers (67 depressed and 62 nondepressed) were observed in the still-face interaction at 2, 4, and 6months. Affect and gaze were coded on a 1-s time base. There were stable individual differences ingazing away and in rates of negative affect. Developmental change occurred only for gazing away, whichincreased. At 18 months, infants who failed to smile at 6 months in the still-face interaction showed moreexternalizing-type behaviors than did other toddlers. Infants who failed to cry at 6 months showed fewerinternalizing-type behaviors. Mothers' current depressive symptoms and infants' earlier responses to thestill-face interaction made independent, comparable contributions to problem behaviors at 18 months.The still-face interaction, in which parents are instructed tobecome unresponsive to their infants after a period of normalsocial play, was designed to assess infants' affective responses toa change in contingent social interaction (Tronick, Als, Adamson,Wise, & Brazelton, 1978). A large body of work has described thenormative responses of infants between the ages of 3 and 9 monthsto the still-face interaction (e.g., Cohn & Tronick, 1983; Field,Vega-Lahr, Scafidi, & Goldstein, 1986; Murray & Trevarthen,1985; Shapiro, Fagen, Prigot, Carroll, & Shalan, 1998; Toda &Fogel, 1993; Tronick et al., 1978; Weinberg & Tronick, 1994,1996). Normative responses include brief smiles, negative facialexpressions, crying, looking away, directed hand movements, andself-soothing behaviors such as thumb sucking. Researchers haveinterpreted these responses as infants' attempts to regain theirparents' attention by smiling, distress at the lack of responsiveness,and attempts to regulate negative emotion by looking away orusing self-soothing techniques, all of which suggest an emergingsocial-emotional competence.Variation from normative responses to the still-face interactionmay reflect important developmental factors and may mark laterdifferences in children's social-emotional competence. However,developmental and individual differences in infant affective re-sponses to the still-face interaction and the predictive validity ofGinger A. Moore, Department of Psychology, Duke University; JeffreyF. Cohn and Susan B. Campbell, Department of Psychology, University ofPittsburgh.This research was supported by Grants MH40867 and MH56604 fromthe National Institute of Mental Health. Portions of this research werepresented at the biennial conference of the International Society for InfantStudies, April 1998, Atlanta, Georgia.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to GingerA. Moore, Department of Psychology, Duke University, Durham, NorthCarolina 27708. Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected] responses have not been researched widely. In prior work,variation has been considered in terms of age-related change(Gusella, Muir, & Tronick, 1988; Shapiro et al., 1998; Toda &Fogel, 1993), the impact of maternal depression (Field, 1984), andindividual differences (Shapiro et al., 1998; Toda & Fogel, 1993).Data regarding the predictive validity of infant affective responsesto the still-face interaction are limited to relations with 12-monthattachment behaviors. In the current study, we examined develop-mental change and individual differences in affective responses tothe still-face interaction in a large sample of healthy infants,including a group of infants whose mothers were diagnosed withdepression during the postpartum period. To examine predictivevalidity, at 18 months we compared the problem behaviors ofinfants whose earlier responses to the still-face interaction werenormative with the problem behaviors of infants who had notshown the normative responses.Developmental ChangeWith the exception of an increase in self-regulatory behaviors(e.g., gazing away, directed hand movements, thumb sucking), noage-related changes in normative responses to the still-face inter-action from 3 to 6 months have been found (Gusella et al., 1988;Shapiro et al., 1998; Toda & Fogel, 1993). Given that social-emotional development undergoes rapid change during this ageperiod and that infants' expressions of positive emotion and re-sponsiveness during mother-infant interactions increase (Cohn &Tronick, 1987; Kaye & Fogel, 1980), it may be that increases inself-regulatory behaviors are responsible for maintaining consis-tent rates of affect in the still-face interaction.However, there are also methodological explanations to con-sider. First, sample sizes in previous studies have been relativelysmall, and there may have been insufficient power to detect de-velopmental change. Second, developmental change in positive706INFANT AFFECTIVE RESPONSES TO MOTHER'S STILL FACE707and negative responses may occur earlier than the 3-month timepoint examined in prior studies. Third, prior research has examineddevelopmental change in terms of the rates of positive and nega-tive responses. Another method is to look for developmentalchange in the number of infants who show the normative positiveand negative responses (smiling and crying, respectively). In thecurrent study, we observed infant positive and negative responsesto the still-face interaction and gazing away as a self-regulatorybehavior (a) in a much larger sample of healthy, full-term infantsthan has been studied previously, (b) beginning at an earlier age,and (c) across shorter developmental increments than were used inother studies. In addition to examining developmental change inthe average rates of positive and negative responses, we examinedchange in the number of infants who smiled and the number ofinfants who cried across 2 to 6 months.Maternal DepressionAlthough age-related changes in the rates of infant positive andnegative affective responses to the still-face


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