Distressed Mothers and Their Infants Use a Less Efficient Timing Mechanism in Creating Expectancies of Each Other’s Looking Patterns

• Published in: Journal of psycholinguistic research Vol. 37; no. 5; pp. 293 - 307
• Main Authors: Beebe, Beatrice, Badalamenti, Anthony, Jaffe, Joseph, Feldstein, Stanley, Marquette, Lisa, Helbraun, Elizabeth, Demetri-Friedman, Donna, Flaster, Caroline, Goodman, Patricia, Kaminer, Tammy, Kaufman-Balamuth, Limor, Putterman, Jill, Stepakoff, Shanee, Ellman, Lauren
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01.09.2008; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Adult and adolescent clinical studies; Anxiety; Attention; Babies; Behavior; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Biological and medical sciences; Child development; Cognitive Development; Cognitive Processes; Cognitive Psychology; Communication; Communication (Thought Transfer); Dependency (Psychology); Depression; Depression (Psychology); Depression, Postpartum - diagnosis; Depression, Postpartum - psychology; Developmental psychology; Doctoral Programs; Evaluation Methods; Eye Movements; Female; Fixation, Ocular; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Infant; Infants; Information Processing; Male; Medical sciences; Modeling (Psychology); Mood disorders; Mother-Child Relations; Mothers; Newborn. Infant; Nonverbal Communication; Object Attachment; Original Article; Parent Child Interaction; Parent Child Relationship; Personality Assessment; Psycholinguistics; Psychology; Psychology, Child; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Psychology. Psychophysiology; Psychopathology. Psychiatry; Psychotherapy; Resistance (Psychology); Rhythm; Scalarity (Semantics); Set (Psychology); Social Behavior; Speech; Standard deviation; Time; Time Factors (Learning); Videotape Recording; Young Children; Baltimore County Maryland; New York; United States > US; Communication timing mechanisms; Mother-infant looking patterns; Maternal depression; Human; Mood disorder; Gaze; Depression; Infant; Mother child relation; Experimental study; Maternal diseases; Mother-infant looking patterns Communication timing mechanisms; Mother; Social interaction; Family environment; Timing; Expectation; Communication
• ISSN: 0090-6905; 1573-6555
• DOI: 10.1007/s10936-008-9078-y

The prediction of events and the creation of expectancies about their time course is a crucial aspect of an infant’s mental life, but temporal mechanisms underlying these predictions are obscure. Scalar timing, in which the ratio of mean durations to their standard deviations is held constant, enables a person to use an estimate of the mean for its standard deviation. It is one efficient mechanism that may facilitate predictability and the creation of expectancies in mother–infant interaction. We illustrate this mechanism with the dyadic gaze rhythm of mother and infant looking at and looking away from each other’s faces. Two groups of Hi- and Lo-Distress mothers were created using self-reported depression, anxiety, self-criticism and childhood experiences. Lo-Distress infants (controls) used scalar timing 100% of the time, about double that of Hi-Distress infants. Lo-Distress mothers used scalar timing about nine times as much as Hi-Distress mothers. The diminished use of scalar timing patterns in Hi-Distress mothers and infants may make the anticipation of each other’s gaze patterns more difficult for both partners.