Longitudinal relations among maternal depressive symptoms, maternal mind-mindedness, and infant attachment behavior.

The relations among maternal depression risk, maternal mind-mindedness, and infants' attachment behavior were longitudinally examined in a community sample of mother-infant dyads. Maternal self-reported depression risk was measured at the infant ages of 6 weeks, 4 months, and 12 months. Maternal mind-mindedness, assessed from mothers' comments about infants' mental states (e.g., infants' thoughts, desires, or emotions), was measured during mother-infant interactions when infants were 4 months. Infants' attachment behavior was assessed at one year. Mothers' depression risk decreased over the infants' first year, with the sharpest decline between 6 weeks and 4 months. Mothers at risk for depression when infants were 6 weeks showed less appropriate mind-mindedness at 4 months. Mind-mindedness was not related to maternal depression risk at the infant age of 4 months or 12 months. Infants' degree of disorganized attachment behavior at one year was positively associated with maternal depression risk at 6 weeks and negatively associated with maternal appropriate mind-mindedness at 4 months. Mothers who are at risk for depression in their infants' early lives may be hampered in their capacity to respond appropriately to their infants' mental states. Infants with mothers who have difficulty responding appropriately to their mental states, as suggested by low appropriate mind-mindedness, may feel less known and recognized by their mothers, a key theme in the origins of disorganized attachment.

Distorted maternal mental representations and atypical behavior in a clinical sample of violence-exposed mothers and their toddlers.

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether maternal violence-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), reflective functioning (RF), and/or quality of mental representations of her child predict maternal behavior within a referred sample of interpersonal violence-exposed mothers and their children (ages 8-50 months). METHOD: Forty-one dyads completed two videotaped visits including measures of maternal mental representations and behavior. RESULTS: Negative and distorted maternal mental representations predicted atypical behavior (Cohen's d>1.0). While maternal PTSD and RF impacted mental representations, no significant relationships were found between PTSD, RF, and overall atypical caregiving behavior. Severity of maternal PTSD was however positively correlated with the avoidant caregiving behavior subscale. CONCLUSIONS: Maternal mental representations of her child are useful risk-indicators that mark dysregulation of trauma-associated emotions in the caregiver.

Distressed mothers and their infants use a less efficient timing mechanism in creating expectancies of each other's looking patterns.

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.

Six-week postpartum maternal self-criticism and dependency and 4-month mother-infant self- and interactive contingencies.

Associations of 6-week postpartum maternal self-criticism and dependency with 4-month mother-infant self- and interactive contingencies during face-to-face play were investigated in 126 dyads. Infant and mother face, gaze, touch, and vocal quality were coded second by second from split-screen videotape. Self- and interactive contingencies were defined as auto- and lagged cross-correlation, respectively, using multilevel time-series models. Statistical significance was defined as p<.05. Regarding self-contingency, (a) more self-critical mothers showed primarily lowered self-contingency, whereas their infants showed both lowered and heightened, and (b) infants of more dependent mothers showed primarily lowered self-contingency, whereas findings were absent in mothers. Regarding interactive contingency, (a) more self-critical mothers showed lowered attention and emotion contingencies but heightened contingent touch coordination with infant touch, and (b) more dependent mothers and their infants showed heightened facial/vocal interactive contingencies. Thus, maternal self-criticism and dependency have different effects on mother-infant communication.

Fits and Starts: A Mother-Infant Case-Study Involving Intergenerational Violent Trauma and Pseudoseizures Across Three Generations.

This case-study presents in detail the clinical assessment of a 29-year-old mother and her daughter who first presented to infant mental health specialists at age 16-months, with a hospital record suggesting the presence of a dyadic disturbance since age 8-months. Data from psychiatric and neurological assessments, as well as observational measures of child and mother are reviewed with attention to issues of disturbed attachment, intergenerational trauma, and cultural factors for this inner-city Latino dyad. Severe maternal affect dysregulation in the wake of chronic, early-onset violent-trauma exposure manifested as psychogenic seizures, referred to in the mother's native Spanish as "ataques de nervios," the latter, an idiom of distress, commonly associated with childhood trauma and dissociation. We explore the mechanisms by which the mothers' reexperiencing of violent traumatic experience, together with physiologic hyperarousal and associated negative affects, are communicated to the very young child and the clinician-observer via action and language from moment to moment during the assessment process. The paper concludes with a discussion of diagnostic and treatment implications by Drs. Marshall, Gaensbauer, and Zeanah.