Edward Z. Tronick

Emotions and Emotional Communication in Infants

Important advances have recently been made in studying emotions in infants and the nature of emotional communication between infants and adults. Infant emotions and emotional communications are far more organized than previously thought. Infants display a variety of discrete affective expressions that are appropriate to the nature of events and their context. They also appreciate the emotional meaning of the affective displays of caretakers. The emotional expressions of the infant and the caretaker function to allow them to mutually regulate their interactions. Indeed, it appears that a major determinant of childrens development is related to the operation of this communication system. Positive development may be associated with the experience of coordinated interactions characterized by frequent reparations of interactive errors and the transformation of negative affect into positive affect, whereas negative development appears to be associated with sustained periods of interactive failure and negative affect.

The Infant's Response to Entrapment between Contradictory Messages in Face-to-Face Interaction

The normal feedback infants receive from their mothers in face-to-face interaction was distorted by having the mothers face their infants but remain facially unresponsive. The infants studied reacted with intense wariness and eventual withdrawal, demonstrating the importance of interactional reciprocity and the ability of infants to regulate their emotional displays.

Three-Month-Old Infants' Reaction to Simulated Maternal Depression.

To investigate the nature of the young infants social competence, the effect of depressed maternal expression during face-to-face interaction was examined using an experimental analogue of maternal depression. Subjects were 12 female and 12 male infants, ages 96-110 days, and their mothers. 2 counter-balanced experimental treatments consisted of 3 min of normal maternal interaction and 3 min of stimulated depressed interaction. A control treatment consisted of 2 3-min epochs of normal maternal interaction. Interactions were videotaped and infant behavior described on a 5-sec time base that maintained order of occurrence. Infants in the depressed condition structured their behavior differently and were more negative than infants in the normal condition. Infants in the depressed condition produced higher proportions of protest, wary, and brief positive. Infants in the depressed condition cycled among protest, wary, and look away. Infants in the normal condition cycled among monitor, brief positive, and play. In addition, differences in negativity were likely to continue briefly after mothers switched from depressed to normal interaction. The data indicate that infants have a specific, appropriate, negative reaction to simulated depression in their mothers. These results question formulations based on alternate hypotheses and suggest that the infant has communicative intent in its interactions.

Infant-Mother Face-to-Face Interaction: Age and Gender Differences in Coordination and the Occurrence of Miscoordination.

To evaluate the extent to which infants and mothers are able to coordinate their behavior, the interactions of 54 mother-infant pairs--18 each at 3, 6, and 9 months of age--were videotaped. Coordination was evaluated with 2 measures: (1) matching--the extent to which mother and infant engage in the same behavior at the same time; and (2) synchrony--the extent to which mother and infant change their behavior with respect to one another. Mother-infant pairs increase their degree of coordination with infant age, but the proportion of time they are coordinated is small. Mother-son pairs spend more time in coordinated states than mother-daughter pairs. The results suggest that interactions be characterized in terms of their movement from coordinated to miscoordinated states rather than only in terms of their degree of coordination. The gender differences are discussed in terms of their importance for the developmental differences in females and males.

Infant Responses to Impending Collision: Optical and Real

Twenty-four infants ranging in age from 2 to 11 weeks responded to symmetrically expanding shadows, which optically specify an approaching object, with an integrated avoidance response and upset. This response did not occur for asymmetrically expanding shadows nor for contracting shadows that specify an object on a miss path and a receding object. The response was observed in all the infants regardless of age, and the addition of kinetic depth information to the displays did not increase the intensity or likelihood of the response. In a second experiment, seven infants defensively reacted to the approach of a real object except when it was on a miss path.

Infants of Depressed Mothers

Depression is the most frequent psychiatric disorder and has long-term, compromising effects on the mother-infant relationship and the childs development. The infant continuously faces a climate of negative affect that disrupts the interactive experience of the infant and the mother. This article presents findings on the impact of maternal depression on the infant affective state and the specific interactive patterns associated with infant affect regulation. Mother-infant interactions were studied using microanalytic, second-by-second methods in the laboratory and also by using naturalistic home observations. The empirical findings highlight the impact of maternal depression on the infant affective state and on the capacity for repairing states of miscoordination. The impact is seen not only in severely and acutely depressed mothers, but in mothers who have only high levels of depressive symptoms. These infants develop negative affective states that bias their interactions with others and exacerbate their affective problems. Further findings with regard to gender-specific effects show that male infants are more vulnerable than female infants to maternal depression. The findings point out the need for therapeutic interventions that focus on the mother-infant dyad and infant affective state in the treatment of maternal depression.

A Mediational Model for the Impact of Exposure to Community Violence on Early Child Behavior Problems

This study examined how maternal distress mediates the link between exposure to community violence (CV) and the development of early child behavior problems. Research was conducted among 160 children, 3,0 to 5,11 in age, who resided in high-crime neighborhoods. Using structural equation modeling, latent variables were constructed to identify model components: maternal socioeconomic status (SES) and public assistance status, exposure to CV (maternal perceptions of local violence, social disorder, and fear of crime; and frequency of child cowitnessing violent events), family aggression (partner aggression toward mother and partner aggression toward child), maternal distress (global distress and posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms), and early child behavior problems (internalizing and externalizing). Bivariate correlations indicated that CV, maternal distress, and early child behavior problems were significantly intercorrelated. A series of structural equation models was specified to estimate the direct and indirect effect of CV on early child behavior problems. A direct model indicated a significant path from CV to early child behavior problems, after controlling for maternal SES and family aggression. The direct CV-early child behavior problems path diminished, however, when maternal distress was included in the model, after controlling for maternal SES and family aggression. Results are consistent with a mediation model of the impact of maternal distress symptoms on the link between CV and early child behavior problems.

Interactive Regulation of Affect in Postpartum Depressed Mothers and Their Infants: An Overview

Specific patterns of interaction emerging in the first months of life are related to processes regulating mutual affects in the mother-child dyad. Particularly important for the dyad are the matching and interactive repair processes. The interaction between postpartum depressed mothers and their children is characterized by a lack of responsiveness, by passivity or intrusiveness, withdrawal and avoidance, as well as a low level of positive expression of affect. Thus, an impaired capability to regulate the child’s affect has been demonstrated in depressed mothers. Maternal aggression, neglect toward infants, infanticidal thoughts, as well as infanticidal behavior are mainly linked to severe postpartum depression, especially with psychotic symptoms. The findings on mother-child interaction reported in this paper are based on mothers with mild to moderate depressive disorders without psychotic symptoms. Considering the stability of interaction patterns in the course of depressive illness as well as the long-term consequences of these interactions, it seems surprising that there are still few systematic studies of depressed mothers interacting with their infants.In connection with an overview on these issues, treatment models forparent-infant psychotherapy are discussed.

The Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (BNBAS)

SummaryThe Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment attempts to capture the behaviors of the neonate as he defends himself from intrusive, negative stimuli, and controls interfering motor and autonomic responses in order to attend to important social and nonsocial stimuli. In order to conceptualize the 26 behavioral items and 20 reflex scores, four clusters or typologies have been identified which help to reduce the data for analytic purposes with small numbers of subjects. So far few long-term validation studies have been completed, although the scale is in use in many different areas, such as obstetrical medication, predicting to neurological deficits, cross-cultural differences, and with low birth weight infants.

Explicating the implicit: the local level and the microprocess of change in the analytic situation.

This paper proposes a method of examining the micro‐events of the analytic process that borrows heavily from developmental research. The increasing importance of illuminating the microprocess of interaction to understanding the process of change in analytic treatment is emphasised. A set of constructs and terminology is proposed for the study of the moment‐to‐moment interactive process in psychoanalytic therapy referred to as the local level. A theory of therapeutic action based on ‘local‐level’ process is then explicated. Its central element involves a step‐by‐step process of ‘fitting together’, which leads to changes in implicit knowing through alteration of emotional procedures.