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Maternal Contingent Responses to Distress Facilitate Infant Soothing but Not in Mothers With Depression or Infants High in Negative Affect

American Psychological Association
Developmental Psychology
Authors:
Kaya de Barbaro at University of Texas at Austin
Kaya de Barbaro
Priyanka Khante at University of Texas at Austin
Priyanka Khante
Meeka Maier
Meeka Maier
Meeka Maier
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Sherryl Hope Goodman at Emory University
Sherryl Hope Goodman
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Abstract

Depression in mothers is consistently associated with reduced caregiving sensitivity and greater infant negative affect expression. The current article examined the real-time behavioral mechanisms underlying these associations using Granger causality time series analyses in a sample of mothers (N = 194; 86.60% White) at elevated risk for depression and their 3-month-old infants (46.40% female) living in a major metropolitan area in the United States. Overall, mothers contingently responded to infant distress, and mothers’ responses to infant distress increased the likelihood of infant soothing in real time. However, there was no evidence for maternal contingent responding or facilitation of infant soothing in subsamples of mothers who were currently experiencing elevated depression symptoms or in mothers of highly negative infants. These findings suggest real-time behavioral mechanisms by which risks for maladaptive self-regulation may develop.
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Maternal Contingent Responses to Distress Facilitate Infant Soothing but Not
in Mothers With Depression or Infants High in Negative Affect
Kaya de Barbaro
1
, Priyanka Khante
2
, Meeka Maier
3
, and Sherryl Goodman
3
1
Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin
2
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin
3
Department of Psychology, Emory University
Depression in mothers is consistently associated with reduced caregiving sensitivity and greater infant neg-
ative affect expression. The current article examined the real-time behavioral mechanisms underlying these
associations using Granger causalitytime series analyses in a sample of mothers (N=194; 86.60% White) at
elevated risk for depression and their 3-month-old infants (46.40% female) living in a major metropolitan
area in the United States. Overall, mothers contingently responded to infant distress, and mothers’responses
to infant distress increased the likelihood of infant soothing in real time. However, there was no evidence for
maternal contingent responding or facilitation of infant soothing in subsamples of mothers who were cur-
rently experiencing elevated depression symptoms or in mothers of highly negative infants. These findings
suggest real-time behavioral mechanisms by which risks for maladaptive self-regulation may develop.
Public Significance Statement
Overall, mothers contingently respond to infant distress, and their responses to distress facilitate infant
soothing. However, in groups of mothers with depression symptoms and groups of infants who show
high levels of distress, we do not find evidence for such regulation behaviors. Our results suggest
that both mothers and infants play key roles in infants’developing self-regulation.
Keywords: mother–infant interaction dynamics, infant distress, negative emotionality, maternal depression,
Granger causality
Supplemental materials: https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001607.supp
A fundamental tenet of attachment theory is that caregivers’
responses to infant distress are the foundation of infant’s developing
social–emotional functioning (Bowlby, 1988). Broadly, a history of
caregivers’sensitive, that is, consistent, contingent, and appropriate
responses to infant distress are thought to facilitate infants’soothing
following distress. Over repeated instances of distress and soothing,
infants are thought to develop the expectation that caregivers will
provide relief, as well as strategies for modulating their own
distress, that is, self-regulation (Kopp, 1989). These theoretical tenets
receive strong empirical support; maternal sensitive responding to
infants’distress is prospectively linked to children’smoreadaptive
emotion regulation, positive social–emotional functioning, and
fewer maladaptive outcomes (Leerkes, 2011;Leerkes et al., 2009;
McElwain & Booth-LaForce, 2006).
Both maternal depression and infant negative affect (NA) expres-
sion have been associated with maternal insensitivity to infant dis-
tress (Field, 2010;Leerkes, 2010;Putnam et al., 2002). Maternal
depression symptoms can interfere with their ability to provide
appropriate support for the regulation of their infants’distress
(Field, 1994,2010). Among a host of genetic, neurobiological,
and environmental factors, such caregiving differences are consid-
ered a key mechanism by which risks for which depression are
This article was published Online First November 30, 2023.
Kaya de Barbaro https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6316-0085
Sherryl Goodman https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6653-2961
This work was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant
1P50 MH077928-01A1 0003 awarded to Sherryl Goodman and by
National Institute of Mental Health K01 Award 1K01MH111957-01A1
awarded to Kaya de Barbaro. We gratefully acknowledge the work of Bettina
Knight and numerous other research assistants and staff as well as the partici-
pation of all families in our study.
Kaya de Barbaro served as lead for writing–original draft and writing–
review and editing, contributed equally to conceptualization, and served in
a supporting role for formal analysis. Priyanka Khante served as lead for
formal analysis and visualization and served in a supporting role for concep-
tualization, data curation, writing–original draft, and writing–review and edit-
ing. Meeka Maier contributed equally to data curation and served in a
supporting role for writing–review and editing. Sherryl Goodman served as
lead for funding acquisition and served in a supporting role for conceptuali-
zation, data curation, and writing–review and editing. Kaya de Barbaro,
Priyanka Khante, and Sherryl Goodman contributed equally to methodology.
Kaya de Barbaro and Sherryl Goodman contributed equally to supervision.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Kaya de
Barbaro, Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin,
108 East Dean Keeton Street, Austin, TX 78712, United States. Email:
kaya@austin.utexas.edu
Developmental Psychology
© 2023 American Psychological Association 2024, Vol. 60, No. 2, 294–305
ISSN: 0012-1649 https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001607
294
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
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... In addition to the communicative function of negative affect expression, distressed infants may have relied on behavioral self-regulatory strategies such as gaze aversion or thumb sucking (Buss & Goldsmith, 1998) to self-soothe; mothers may have adjusted their patterns of contingent responsiveness based on inferences about infant distress based on their use of these strategies. Recent evidence suggests that mothers shift their affect expression in response to infant distress, which influences infants' real-time engagement in self-soothing behavior (de Barbaro et al., 2024). Future investigations are also needed to evaluate whether the pattern observed in the present study generalizes to nonrelational stressors (e.g., physical challenges such as inoculation or other medical procedures). ...
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... Taken together, although we know that laboratory assessments can provide insight into developmental processes, it is still unclear the degree to which the behaviors observed in the lab map on to what the child experiences in terms of caregiving in their everyday life. Although there is some recent work examining the role of caregiving "in the wild" in developmental processes (e.g., Madden-Rusnak et al., 2023;de Barbaro et al., 2023), we know little about the level (and impact) of variation in caregiving (e.g., at home vs. at daycare; during meals vs. at bedtime; with mom vs. dad vs. when both are present; and in other combinations) on children's functioning. ...
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