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JNFANT EXPRESSIVENESS: THE INFLUENCES OF INFANT AFFECTIVE STABJLJTY, MATERNAL, MOOD, AND MATERNAL AFFECTIVE BEHAVIOR

Erika E. Forbes, Adena J. Zlochower, and Jeffrey F. Cohn

Dept. of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh, 4015 O’Hara St., Rm. 604, Pittsburgh, PA 15260

In the first year of life, infant expression of positive affect during social interaction becomes more stable. The factors that contribute to this stability are not well understood. One possibility is an emerging trait-like tendency for expressiveness, another is consistency in parents’ affective behavior during interactions, and still another is a correlation between infants’ behavior and trait characteristics of parental affect. Research on mother-infant interaction and infant temperament suggests that both maternal affective characteristics and trait-like features of infant expressiveness play a role in the stability of infant expressiveness. Such research, however, frequently measures infant expressiveness using maternal questionnaires of infant temperament and describes maternal affect using behavioral observation. To elucidate the influences on infant expressiveness, the current longitudinal study used behavioral observation to measure infant and maternal affect and a self-report instrument to measure maternal mood.

We examined the following predictors of lo-month-old infants’ expression of positive affect during interaction with their mothers: infant display of positive affect at 4 months of age, maternal positive affect at 10 months, and maternal mood at 4 and 10 months. Because influence during interaction is bidirectional, we also tested the hypothesis that both infant affective behavior and maternal mood contribute to maternal affective behavior.

Forty-five mother-infant pairs participated in a 5-min face-to-face free play interaction at 4 and 10 months of age. Infants were seated in an infant chair opposite their mothers. Frontal views of both participants were filmed using two video cameras in a split-screen procedure. At both ages, mothers completed the Profile of Mood States (POMS: McNair et al., 1981), a factor analytically derived inventory that measures six affective states.

Facial expressions were coded during the first two minutes of the interaction in which both mother and infant were visible. Mothers were coded using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS: Ekman & Friesen, 1978), which is an anatomically based system that codes all visibly discriminable facial movements. Infants were coded using descriptors based on Monadic Phases (Tronick et al., 1980) and the Maximally Descriptive Facial Movement Coding System (MAX: Izard, 1983). This system includes seven infant codes, which are arranged on a continuum from strong negative to neutral to strong positive affect.

We examine the relative contributions of stability of infant expressiveness, maternal concurrent affective behavior, and maternal self-reported mood to infant expressiveness at 10 months of age. We also explain maternal positive affect at 10 months from infant expressiveness, stability of maternal positive affect, and maternal mood.