Mother-infant face-to-face intermodal discrepancy and risk

Abstract

During mother-infant face-to-face communication, many modalities are always at play: gazing at and away from the partner, facial expression, vocalization, orientation and touch. Multi-modal information in social communication typically conveys congruent information, which facilitates attention, learning, and interpersonal relatedness. However, when different modalities convey discrepant information, social communication can be disturbed. This paper illustrates forms of discrepant mother-infant communication drawn from our prior studies in three risk contexts: maternal depression, maternal anxiety, and the origins of disorganized attachment. Because many examples of discrepancies emerged in the course of our studies, we consider inter-modal discrepancies to be important markers of disturbed mother-infant communication.