A longitudinal analysis of inhibition of infant distress: The origins of social expectations?

A perspective-based analysis of attachment from prenatal period to second year postnatal life

Attachment is one of the foundational themes in the history of the psychological development of human beings. For this reason, we assume that it must be approached by taking into account multiple scientific perspectives. The present review aims at analyzing the state of the art regarding the genetic, neurobiological and cognitive mechanisms underlying the development of attachment bonding, considering the child as the frame of reference. We hypothesize that attachment may be present in prototypical forms even in the prenatal period, thus our analysis has a temporal origin in the intrauterine period preceding birth. The intrauterine period is assumed to be a period of maximum sensitivity to stimuli and in particular to those coming from a potential primary caregiver: the biological mother. We conclude with a reframing of the state of the art and propose that future research work would benefit from a superordinate model of attachment, capable of containing and regulating all its components and variables.

Putting salient vocalizations in context: Adults' physiological arousal to emotive cues in domestic and external environments

Salient vocalizations are automatically processed and distinguished from emotionally irrelevant information. However, little is known of how contextual, gender and attentional variables interact to modulate physiological responses to salient emotive vocalizations. In this study, electrocardiogram (ECG) was utilized to investigate differences in peripheral nervous activity of men and women to infant cry (IC), infant laughter (IL) and adult cry (AC) in two different situational contexts: the domestic environment (DE) and the outside environment (OE). As the mental state of listeners can affect their response to vocalizations, a between-subject design was applied: one group was instructed to imagine being inside the scenes (Task 1: explicit task), and the other group was told to look at the scenes (Task 2: implicit task). Results revealed that females exhibited lower inter-beat interval (IBI) index in the OE condition, as compared to both males in OE and females in DE conditions, suggesting greater physiological arousal amongst females in response to vocalizations in an outside environment. Additionally, Task 1 revealed that males demonstrated higher Low Frequency/High Frequency (LFHF) index towards AC than IL. Task 2 showed the same association between these two sounds in females. The implicit task also elicited lower LFHF index in response to both IL and IC than control sound (CS), only amongst females. Findings highlight the important roles that contextual information and cognitive demand play in regulating physiological responses to salient emotive vocalizations. Integrated perspectives of physiological responses to emotive vocalizations that consider the influence of internal (adult mental states) and external (environment) contextual information will provide a better understanding of mechanisms underlying emotional processing of salient social cues.

The Development of Social Expectations in Distress-Relief Sequences: A Longitudinal Study

Thirty infants were observed at home each month between one and seven months of age. They were unobtrusively filmed in situations in which their mothers or unfamiliar women responded to their naturally occurring cries by either picking them up or standing alongside and talking to them (the 'inhibit' condition). Picking up was effective in soothing infants from the first month on. Further, 80% of the one-month-olds began to soothe even before being picked up. Starting around four to five months of age, the infants protested (by crying more loudly) when the adults (especially mothers) failed to pick them up (i.e., in the inhibit condition). At the same age, infants began to orient away from the adults in the inhibit condition. These results suggest that infants develop conditioned associations among distress, pick-up, and comfort by one month of age and that by four to five months, they develop cognitive expectations regarding social responses. Protest and aversion occur when these expectations are violated.

Perceptions of Personal Agency and Infant Attachment: Toward a Life-Span Perspective on Competence Development

Because perceptions of personal agency are important contributors to behavioral regulation, they play a significant role in promoting and maintaining competent functioning. Yet, thus far, these processes have been studied almost exlusively in older children and adults. Our discussion sketches the outlines of a life-span approach to the study of competence development by considering the emergence of personal agency beliefs in the infancy and toddler years and their importance to early developmental achievements. After presenting a general framework for conceptualizing personal agency beliefs and an overview of the research with older groups relevant to this framework, studies of the origins of perceived effectance and their motivational consequences in infancy are reviewed. Next we propose that individual differences in the security of attachment and their sequelae can be viewed as reflecting, in part, variations in perceptions of personal agency among infants and toddlers, a view which also suggests important new directions in attachment theory and research. Finally, we outline research issues concerning the generality and stability of personal agency beliefs, their behavioral correlates at different ages, and their overall role in a general life-span theory of competence development.

Evidence for a Caregiving Instinct: Rapid Differentiation of Infant from Adult Vocalizations Using Magnetoencephalography

Crying is the most salient vocal signal of distress. The cries of a newborn infant alert adult listeners and often elicit caregiving behavior. For the parent, rapid responding to an infant in distress is an adaptive behavior, functioning to ensure offspring survival. The ability to react rapidly requires quick recognition and evaluation of stimuli followed by a co-ordinated motor response. Previous neuroimaging research has demonstrated early specialized activity in response to infant faces. Using magnetoencephalography, we found similarly early (100-200 ms) differences in neural responses to infant and adult cry vocalizations in auditory, emotional, and motor cortical brain regions. We propose that this early differential activity may help to rapidly identify infant cries and engage affective and motor neural circuitry to promote adaptive behavioral responding, before conscious awareness. These differences were observed in adults who were not parents, perhaps indicative of a universal brain-based "caregiving instinct."

The Pathogenesis and Treatment of Emotion Dysregulation in Borderline Personality Disorder

Uncontrollable emotional lability and impulsivity are a paramount phenomenon of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). This paper aims to review theories that entertain emotion dysregulation as the core deficit of BPD and a key factor in the etiology of BPD, in order, then, to propose the author's own theory, which arguably transcends certain limitations of the earlier ones. The author asserts that his psychodynamic theory explains the symptoms of BPD more thoroughly and it inspires a more parsimonious interpretation of brain imaging findings. In closing, the author draws implications of the proposed theory for clinical practice. He reports an efficacy study for treatment of emotion dysregulation based on that theory.

Age-Related Changes in the Signal Value of Tears

Emotional tears may be uniquely human and are an effective signal of distress in adults. The present study explored whether tears signal distress in younger criers and whether the effect of tears on observers is similar in magnitude across the life span. Participants rated photographs of crying infants, young children, and adults, with tears digitally removed or added. The effectiveness of tears in conveying sadness and eliciting sympathy was greatest for images of adults, intermediate for images of children, and least potent for images of infants. These findings suggest that the signal value of tears varies with the age of the crier. The results may shed light on the functional significance of crying at different stages of human development.

Impaired regulation of arousal in 3-month-old infants exposed prenatally to cocaine and other drugs

This study investigated relations between drug exposure, particularly cocaine, and infants' regulation of arousal in response to novelty. Sixty-three infants — 36 cocaine exposed and 27 non-cocaine exposed — participated at 3 months of age in a novel-repeat stimulus presentation procedure. Arousal was operationalized in terms of infant behavioral state, affective expressiveness, and attention to the stimulus. Infants were tested and infant behaviors were scored by experimenters blind to the drug exposure status of the infant. There were no differences between the two groups in baseline behavioral state or affective expression before the presentation of novel stimuli. Compared to the non-cocaine-exposed group, infants exposed prenatally to cocaine and other drugs were more likely to exhibit a crying state and to display negative affect on novel stimulus presentations. There were no group differences in the amount of looking toward the stimulus. Both groups showed less crying and negative affect when stimuli were presented a second time, but decrements were consistently greater for the cocaine-exposed group. These results obtained when group differences were controlled for sociodemographic and perinatal variables. Sources of differences in the regulation of arousal in cocaine-exposed and non-cocainc-exposed infants are discussed, and impairments in the regulation of arousal in cocaine-exposed infants are considered in a framework of predictive implications for children's social and cognitive development.

Emotion dysregulation and the development of borderline personality disorder

We review the role of emotion regulation in borderline personality disorder (BPD). We briefly discuss the historical development of BPD as a disorder where emotional regulation plays a key role. We review the concept of emotion regulation in general and explore both one-factor and two-factor models of emotion regulation. We discuss cognitive and attentional aspects of emotion regulation, and explore these regulatory controls as operating as both voluntary as well as automatic processes. We then turn to other neurophysiological models of emotion regulation in general and examine how those models, both neurophysiologically and neuroanatomically, are expressed in individuals with BPD. We examine how neuroimaging, both anatomical and functional, reveals the roles that various neuroanatomical structures play in the regulation of emotion in BPD. We conclude by creating a neurodevelopmental model that describes how a complex matrix involving the interplay of constitutional/biological predispositions with environmental stressors as well as with parental effectiveness in response to the child's emotion expression can impact key aspects of adult cognitive, affective, interpersonal, and behavioral functioning that culminate in a diagnosis of BPD.

Maternal soothing and infant stress responses: Soothing, crying and adrenocortical activity during inoculation

The relation between maternal soothing and infant stress response during inoculation was examined in a sample of 37 mothers and their 3-month-old infants. The mothers' soothing and the infants' cry vocalizations and the mothers' and the infants' salivary cortisol level pre- and post-injection were analysed. There was a positive relation between infants' cry vocalization post-injection and maternal soothing pre- and post-injection. The sample was divided in two sub-groups depending on whether the mothers evidenced most soothing of the infants in the period before (Preparatory group; n=20) or after (Contingent group; n=17) the syringe injection. In the Preparatory group, the duration of infant cry vocalizations was related to amount of maternal soothing before and after the injection, while cry vocalizations in the Contingent group was related to amount of maternal soothing after the injection. The Contingent infants responded to the injection with a significant increase in cortisol, while there was no increase in the Preparatory infants. The Preparatory infants evidenced significantly longer duration of looking at the target stimuli in a visual marking task, suggesting greater difficulties in disengaging attention. These findings indicate that 3-month-olds' stress responses and their mothers' situational behaviour are mutually regulated.

An ethological analysis of human infant crying: answering Tinbergen's four questions

The proximate causes, survival value, ontogeny, and evolutionary history of human infant crying are examined. Experiments and field observations involving infant distress vocalizations and begging calls in avian, mammalian, and nonhuman primate species are considered, as are ethnographic records of infant care and responses to crying in nonindustrialized societies. It is argued that human infant crying evolved as a primarily acoustic, graded signal, that it is a fairly reliable, if imperfect, indicator of need for parental care and that its primary function is to promote parental caregiving. Selection pressures that may have shaped the evolution of crying and its potential for corruption through dishonesty also are discussed.

Crying patterns in preterm infants

Healthy infants born at term cry most in the first three months of life, with a peak and increased crying in the evening during the second month. To determine whether the crying of preterm infants manifests similar features, the pattern of crying from 40 weeks gestational age through 24 weeks corrected age was described for 35 relatively healthy preterm infants born between 28 and 34 weeks gestational age. Despite their additional extra-uterine experience, they still cried significantly more after 40 weeks gestational age, with a peak and evening clustering at 6 weeks corrected age. The age of peak crying was not related to gestational age at birth, weight for gestational age, or a variety of perinatal and neurological indices. The results support the argument that the early-peak pattern is a robust maturational feature of early development and may be universal to human infancy.

Crying in !Kung San infants: a test of the cultural specificity hypothesis

The pattern of crying and fretting behavior during the first two years is described for 46 !Kung San infants from a hunter-gatherer society in northwestern Botswana. Despite markedly different caretaking practices predisposing to quieter infants, crying and fretting were significantly greater during the first three months, and a peak pattern was present. Measurement of crying 'intensity' indicated that it was predominantly short and fretful. The results support the concept that the early peak pattern is not specific to infants in western industrialized societies, and may represent a behavior universal to the human species. The caretaking differences between societies primarily appear to affect crying duration rather than its frequency and pattern in early infancy.