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TOUCH DURING MOTHER-INFANT INTERACTIONS

Emily L. Fergus, Jeffrey Pickens & Jennifer Schmidt,

Department of Psychology, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 22807.

This study investigated non-verbal behavior during mother-infant play interactions. Mothers and their infants were videotaped for 3 minutes, with instructions to mothers to “play with your baby as you normally would at home”. Following the interactions, mothers completed the Carey & McDevitt Infant Temperament Scale (ITQ), the Abidin Parenting Stress Index (PSI), the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and the “state” portion of the Spielberger State/Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). N = 65 mother- infant dyads were tested, where the mothers’ mean age was 30.2 years. There were 36 male and 29 female infants in the study with a mean age of 164.1 days, and all were healthy, full-term infants. Videotaped interactions were coded by rating each of the following behaviors on a 5-point scale with higher scores indicating a higher frequency of occurrence (interobserver reliability coefficients are in parentheses):

Mother: Infant. Affectionate Touch (.93) AGion Getting Behaviors (.73) Attention Capturing Touch (.73) Head Orientation to Mother (.93) Game Playing Touch (.86) Body Orientation to Mother (.66) Head/Body Orientation (.81) Reaching toward Mother (.73)

Ratings were summed into an overall touch score. Mothers in this sample who reported higher depressive symptoms (BDI > 12) were observed to have higher overall scores, indicating that they touched their infants more than “non-depressed” (BDI < 9) mothers &I= 28.4 vs. 34.1; F (1,55) = 7,665, p < .Ol). This was a somewhat surprising finding given prior reports suggesting that depressed mothers exhibit a more withdrawn and understimulating style with their infants. However, post-hoc inspection of the videotaped interactions revealed that this result was primarily due to the symptomatic mothers in this sample appearing to be overstimulating with their infants by engaging in higher rates of poking, vigourous tickling, and snapping fingers or clapping hands to capture their baby’s attention. No statistically significant relationships were observed between overall touch scores and maternal STAI or PSI scores. However, correlational analyses did reveal a significant positive correlation between scores on the adaptability subscale of the ITQ and touch scores (r = .26, p < .05). This suggests that mothers who rated their infants as easier and more adaptable touched their infants more than the mothers who rated their infants as more difficult and less adaptive. The present data suggests that analysis of non-verbal behaviors, and specifically patterns of maternal touching, may be useful for characterizing the quality and style of play interactions between a mother and her infant.