The effect of mother-infant skin-to-skin contact on Ghanaian infants' response to the Still Face Task: Comparison between Ghanaian and Canadian mother-infant dyads

Universality without uniformity - infants' reactions to unresponsive partners in urban Germany and rural Ecuador

Previous studies based on non-WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) samples provide initial evidence that the still-face effect is universal. Based on the assumption that - independent of their cultural niches - infants share some fundamental expectations of social interactions, we put forth the assumption that a universal response exists for when a social interaction is interrupted. At the same time, we hypothesized that the size of the effect depends on the typicality of the interaction that precedes the adult partners' interruption. To test these hypotheses, we conducted the Still-Face Paradigm (SFP) with infants (3- and 4.5-month-olds) from two cultural milieus, namely Münster (urban Germany) and the Kichwa ethnic group from the northern Andes region (rural Ecuador), as these contexts presumably offer different ways of construing the self that are associated with different parenting styles, namely distal and proximal parenting. Furthermore, we developed a paradigm that comes much closer to the average expected environment of Kichwa infants, the "No-Touch Paradigm" (NTP). Overall, the results support our initial hypothesis that the still-face effect is universal. Moreover, infants from both cultural milieus responded to the no-touch condition with a change in negative affect. At the same time, some of the infants' responses were accentuated in a culture-specific way: Kichwa infants had a stronger response to an interruption of proximal interaction patterns during the NTP. While our findings underline infants' universal predisposition for face-to-face interaction, they also suggest that cultural differences in internalized interactions do influence infant behavior and experience and, in turn, development.

Intersubjectivity and the Emergence of Words

Intersubjectivity refers to two non-verbal intersubjective relations infants experience during their first year that are precursors to the emergence of words. Trevarthen, a pioneer in the study of intersubjectivity, referred to those relations as primary and secondary intersubjectivity. The former, a dyadic coordination between the infant and her caregiver, begins at birth. The latter, a triadic coordination that develops around 9 months, allows the infant and a caregiver to share attention to particular features of the environment. Secondary intersubjectivity is crucial for an infant’s ability to begin to produce words, at around 12 months. Much research on the social and cognitive origins of language has focused on secondary intersubjectivity. That is unfortunate because it neglects the fact that secondary intersubjectivity and the emergence of words are built on a foundation of primary intersubjectivity. It also ignores the evolutionary origins of intersubjectivity and its uniquely human status. That unique status explains why only humans learn words. This article seeks to address these issues by relating the literature on primary intersubjectivity, particularly research on bi-directional and contingent communication between infants and mothers, to joint attention and ultimately to words. In that context, we also discuss Hrdy’s hypothesis about the influence of alloparents on the evolution of intersubjectivity.

Caregiver-child proximity as a dimension of early experience

Human infancy and early childhood is both a time of heightened brain plasticity and responsivity to the environment as well as a developmental period of dependency on caregivers for survival, nurturance, and stimulation. Across primate species and human evolutionary history, close contact between infants and caregivers is species-expected. As children develop, caregiver-child proximity patterns change as children become more autonomous. In addition to developmental changes, there is variation in caregiver-child proximity across cultures and families, with potential implications for child functioning. We propose that caregiver-child proximity is an important dimension for understanding early environments, given that interactions between children and their caregivers are a primary source of experience-dependent learning. We review approaches for operationalizing this construct (e.g., touch, physical distance) and highlight studies that illustrate how caregiver-child proximity can be measured. Drawing on the concepts proposed in dimensional models of adversity, we consider how caregiver-child proximity may contribute to our understanding of children's early experiences. Finally, we discuss future directions in caregiver-child proximity research with the goal of understanding the link between early experiences and child adaptive and maladaptive functioning.

Patterns of regulatory behavior in the still-face paradigm at 3 months: A comparison of Brazilian and Portuguese infants

Three infant regulatory behavior patterns have been identified during the Face-to-Face Still-Face paradigm (FFSF) in prior research samples: a Social-Positive Oriented pattern (i.e., infants exhibit predominantly positive social engagement), a Distressed-Inconsolable pattern (i.e., infants display conspicuous negative affect that persists or increases across FFSF episodes), and a Self-Comfort Oriented pattern (e.g., infants primarily engage in self-comforting behaviors such as thumb-sucking). However, few studies have examined these patterns outside US and European countries or evaluated potential cross-country differences in these patterns. In this study, we compared the regulatory behavior patterns of 74 Brazilian and 124 Portuguese infants in the FFSF at 3 months of age, and evaluated their links to demographic and birth variables. The prevalence of the three regulatory patterns varied by country. The most frequent pattern in the Portuguese sample was the Social-Positive Oriented, followed by the Distressed-Inconsolable and the Self-Comfort Oriented. However, in the Brazilian sample, the Distressed-Inconsolable pattern was the most prevalent, followed by the Social-Positive Oriented and the Self-Comfort Oriented. Moreover, in the Brazilian sample, familial SES was higher among infants with a Social-Positive pattern whereas 1^st-minute Apgar scores were lower among Portuguese infants with a Distressed-Inconsolable Oriented pattern of regulatory behavior. In each sample, Social Positive pattern of regulatory behavior was associated with maternal sensitivity, Self-Comfort Oriented pattern of regulatory behavior with maternal control, and Distressed-Inconsolable pattern with maternal unresponsivity.