Processing Affect 2 Flashcards
“In individual emotional development the precursor of the mirror is the mother’s face…what does the baby see when he or she looks at the mother’s face?” (Winnicott, 1971)
What does this mean?
- I am suggesting that, ordinarily, what the baby sees is himself or herself”
- The expectancy we see in children to be seen and see out
- Mirroring
Affective Communication 3 time points
- Inter-subjectivity
- Intimacy, trust, security
- Coherence
Affective Communication:
- what do co-ordinated patterns of interaction underpin?
- What happens when affective communication is atypical?
- depression?
Co-ordinated patterns of interaction underpin healthy emotional development
- What happens when affective communication is atypical?
–Modern caregiving practices have become increasingly divergent to that which the human genus spent over 90% of its existence (Hewlett & Lamb, 2005)
The way we want to look at this is through the lens of depression
We live in a culture where we have highlighted our independality and we have made it difficult to create a we (there is a gap between us and others).
Depression is an occurrence through these communities where we have perhaps forgotten about being intimate
Still face
Infants react when the emotional regularity from caregiver is withdrawn
When mother presents a still face, baby very quickly picks up on the reaction and tries to get the mothers reactions back. The baby then reacts with negative emotions and turns away
Infants can feed into space between caregiver and when the caregiver becomes absent, they will react and try to get them back
The good, the bad and the ugly
Still-paradigm
What does it suggest?
Suggests that infants are sensitive to social cues and expect intimate social interactions with their caregivers as well as being active participants in them. Interactions serve to process and regulate affect and co-ordinate meanings. Infants show distress when the caregiver does not participate in these interactions, infants show protest reactions and try to re-instate engagement.
Disputed Communications:
- what do video reactions studies show infants are sensitive to?
- what are different time lags?
- what is synchrony?
- time lags (when there is a time lag in reaction, this becomes distressing for them)
- Frequent short looks in depressed mothers (e.g break mutual gaze within 1-2s lag)
- Switching pauses are longer and more variable - synchrony- meet each other at the same moment in time- predictability in reaction
Social Fittedness: Parental Brain
When we become caregivers/ parents we have sensitivity to become re oriented.
Parental brain is supporting the social interaction and social sensitivity. This is supported by areas of empathy, mentalizing, emotionality, embodiment, reward ect.
Depression- this plasticity/ caregiving network of the brain is highly affective
These changes we see when people become parents, the greater sensitivity, are not operated in depression.
These neural changes might explain why parents with depression could be less than motivated and less sensitive to interact with their with infants.
Parenting practices (McLearn et al., 2006)
Procedure
Compared three types of parenting practices: Safety, feeding and social practices
Comparison of mothers with (N=867) and without (N=4007) depressive symptoms at 2-4 months post-partum
Analysis adjusted for age, race, marital status, education, employment, income, and previous motherhood
The presence of maternal depressive symptoms was measured in the 2- to 4-month interview using a modified version of the CES-D. The CES-D is a 20-item self-report scale designed to measure the frequency of depressive symptoms experienced in the previous week
Parenting practices (McLearn et al., 2006)
Safety practices results
wrong sleep position:
depressive symptoms: 14.3%
no depressive symptoms: 11.9%
If the mother has depressive symptoms, they’re more likely to put children in the wrong sleep position:
Lowered water temperature
depressive symptoms: 24.3%
no depressive symptoms: 31%
If they have depressive symptoms, they are less likely to adjust the water temperature which has negative implications on infant- They’re skin is highly sensitive
Parenting practices (McLearn et al., 2006)
Feeding practices results
gave cereal: (ingestion problems)
depressive symptoms: 34.6%
no depressive symptoms: 27%
gave water: (electrolytes)
depressive symptoms: 50.5%
no depressive symptoms: 40%
gave juice: (more likely to have cavities)
depressive symptoms: 16.8%
no depressive symptoms: 11.9%
Breastfeeding:
depressive symptoms: 43.8%
no depressive symptoms: 56.9%
Parenting practices (McLearn et al., 2006)
Socio-emotional practices results
showed book:
depressive symptoms: 22.4%
no depressive symptoms: 28.2%
played with infant:
depressive symptoms: 87.4%
no depressive symptoms: 91.9%
talked to infant:
depressive symptoms: 59.6%
no depressive symptoms: 64.1%
> 2 (or equal) routines
depressive symptoms: 59.6%
no depressive symptoms: 66.9%
Playing with the infant is slightly lower, talking to the infant is also lower and routines for depressed individuals.
Parenting practices (McLearn et al., 2006)
- Significantly lower odds for breastfeeding and social interactions in adjusted models
–19% reduced odds for showing book
–15% reduced odds for each playing and talking
–33% reduced odds for following routines - Association between maternal core beliefs and feeding problems (Blissett et al., 2005)
Graph shows the signal change in the ventral striatum for depressed mothers and healthy controls when exposed to three different sound types: The sound of their own infant crying, the sound of another infant crying and a control sounds.
What are the results
Non-depressed mothers show heightened activity in the ventral striatum compared to depressed mothers in the own infant cry condition. No group differences in other conditions.
Depressed vs control for self and external focus
Depressed individuals have a greater tendency to pay attention to themselves compared to the external world.
Non-depressed have similar levels of internal and external
Depression- caregivers are less likely to enter the space between themselves and their infant
Disturbed Infant Interactions
Infants of depressed mothers results
- Looked at behaviour of infants shortly after birth
- Looking at how alert/ sensitive/ depressed/ interrupted their sleep/ stress
Significant differences:
Infants of depressed mothers are less likely to orient, more likely to show signs of depress themselves, less likely to sleep ect.
Infant temperament predicted development of parent depression (Murray et al., 1996)
Percentage of interaction time dyads for infants of depressed vs non depressed mothers
Percentage of interaction time dyads are in similar state
Infant is more likely to experience anger with mother who is depressed
Play is increased in non depressed
Latency to synchrony:
What is found for three groups of mothers (depression, anxiety and control)
The latency to the first appearance of gaze synchrony in mother-infant dyads is longer when the mother is experiencing depression compared to anxious and control dyads. The same patterns goes for the latency for touch synchrony- mother affectively touches infant
Behaviour appears later
Duration of synchrony for three groups (depression, anxiety and control) for gaze and touch synchrony
Differences in how long the synchrony lasts
Reduced occurrence of touch synchrony in depression group. Less significant differences for touch synchrony.
Lower duration of synchrony in dyads where the parent has depression compared to anxious and control dyads. No group differences for the duration of touch synchrony.
The percentage of infant negative affect following an anger provocation paradigm.
Difference between three groups (depression, anxiety and control).
The procedure was run twice, once with the mother and once with a stranger.
What was found?
Infants of depressed mothers showed greater negative emotionality and cortisol reactivity
Infants of control and anxious mothers show less negative affect with the mother compared to a stranger, but this buffering effect is absent in the depression group. The depression shows the highest negative affect percentage when with the mother.
Synchrony, messiness and repair
+ what happens when parents have depression
Synchrony is not perfect
We experience messiness
Interactive repair needs to occur
When parent has depression- reduced synchrony and repair
Infants with caregivers of depression are more likely to stay in stage of messiness ( and arousal)
Arousal:
- importance?
- what does it trigger?
- Infant needs ongoing co-modulation of arousal & raw experiences: No ability to repress content- emotion becomes intense for them and they don’t have the ability to reduce it (Schore, 2012)
- Therefore important for caregiver to repress this state
–Depressed mothers were less likely to attempt repairs of interrupted interactions and more likely to capitulate (Field, 2010; Jameson et al., 1997) - Triggers alarm state (arousal becomes fear)
–Fight or flight: State of hyperarousal. (Increase in arousal/ energy)
–Freeze or collapse: State of immobility. (Arousal drops when there is little stimulation and we freeze)
- what is required
- what do high/ low arousal need
- sympathetic and parasympathetic ANS
What is required is achievement at 2 levels of arousal
Too high arousal needs less energy and low arousal needs to more energy to be injected
Sympathetic ANS high energy intersubjectivity field of psychobiological attainment, rupture and interactive repair
Parasympathetic ANS low energy intersubjective field of psychobiological attunement, rupture and interactive repair
What are infants able to understand?
The meaning of relationship- these early interactions are creating wombs- an implicit memory
- failure to?
- infants are?
- relational hurt ->
Failure to integrate affective experiences can render them unendurable
– Infant withdraws
Infant are meaning-makers
– Loss of co-experiencing à Loss of safety and trust
– Adaptation: Emotionally unavailable adult no longer violates infant expectation
Relational Hurt → Fragile self-system
– Infants of depressed mothers
– 15% of infants in low risk families (not physically maltreating) evidence defensive adaptation and disorganisation
What do alterations in communication predict?
Dissociation
Disrupted communication at 18 months predicts the level of dissociative symptoms when the individual is 19 years (.53)
Disrupted communication is the strongest predictor
How does nurture affect self-awareness in two groups of children
(Ross et al., 2017)
Comparison of rural Zambian (care giving is consistent) and urban Scottish (care is not consistent with human nest any more) infants’ self-awareness at 15-18 months.
Look at how care affects their self-awareness (2 measures of self-awareness: mirror self-recognition (most common) and body-as-obstacle)
Mirror self-recognition= measures ability of child to recognise themselves as an independent entity
Body as-obstacle= the ability of the young infant to recognise itself as a cell that is embedded in its environment.
Mirror self-recognition: Urban Scottish do better, they find it easier to recognise themself (46 vs 15)
Body-as-obstacle: Rural Zambian do better (50 vs 22).
Attachment insecurity and mirror self-recognition (Lewis et al., 1985)
Children at 18 months are more likely to pass the mirror-self recognition test if they’re insecurely attached to caregiver. If they are securely attached they are less likely to pass the mirror-self recognition test.
Maybe these children are becoming independent too soon.
No difference between secure and insecure at 24 months.
Trends in attachment quality- the percentage of university students classified as insecurely or securely attached as determined with the Adult Attachment Interview
For 6 different cohorts of university students: 1988-1992, 1993-1996, 1997-2000, 2001-2004, 2005-2008, 2009-2011. The trend suggests that the proportion of insecure versus secure attachment has been increasing from the year 2000 to 2011.
(insecure increases as years go on)
