Processing affect 1

Question 1

human nest

Answer 1

• Soothing perinatal experiences (e.g., no separation from mother)
  
  • Breastfeeding on request for 2-5 years
  • Affectionate touch; responsivity; free play
  • Social embeddedness

Question 2

empathy has deep roots (e.g., Darwin, 1871)

Answer 2

• Emotional bridge between organism and environment (e.g., Freud, 1938; Ferreira, 1961)
  
  • Little empirical attention to infant’s affective capacities until the 1970s and 80s

Question 3

intersubjective infant

Answer 3

• Experience-expectant (e.g., Narvaez et al., 2013)
  
  • Infant sensory organism is highly receptive to stimuli arriving from social world (i.e., social fittedness; e.g., MacFarlane, 1975)
  • Engages dyadic, affectively charged exchanges and interactions (“proto-conversations”; Trevarthen, 1979)

Question 4

affective communication

Answer 4

• “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? I am suggesting that, ordinarily, what the baby sees is himself or herself” (Winnicott, 1971)
  
  • “For reasons we don’t yet understand, the tendency to synchronise is perhaps the most pervasive drives in the universe. It extends from people to planets, from animals to atoms” (Strogatz, 2004)
  • “It has…become abundantly clear that…the dyadic relations between child and caregivers within the first years of life can have direct and enduring effects on the child’s brain development & behaviour” (Leckman & March; 2011)

Question 5

synchrony

Answer 5

• “…an overarching process that co-ordinates the ongoing exchanges of sensory, hormonal, and physiological stimuli between parent and child social interactions…” (Feldman, 2007, p. 340)
  
  • Motor activity
  • Body sensation
  • Emotion
  • Cognition

Question 6

1

Answer 6

• Best functioning mother-infant dyads are in attuned states about 28-34% of the time (Harris & Waugh,2002; Tronick & Beeghly, 2011)

Question 7

2

Answer 7

• Repair of mistakes in face-to-face interactions with infants occurs within 3-5s (Reck et al., 2004)

Question 8

3

Answer 8

• Latency to interactive repair related to infant cortisol reactivity (Müller et al., 2015)
  
  • Timely reparation of mismatch aided infant recovery
  • Self-comforting positively related to cortisol reactivity

Question 9

4

Answer 9

• Sensitive re-attuning regulates physiology, builds resilience and trust (e.g., HPA axis; Gunnar & Donzella, 2002)
  
  • Maternal touch can lower infant’s heart rate during arousal (Calkins & Hall, 2007)
  • Parent engagement and infant expectations (Kogan & Carter, 1996)

Question 10

5

Answer 10

· Co-regulation is critical in child-caregiver dyads given protracted development of neural system
- Neocortical regions can alter limbic activity (Hariri et al., 2000)
- Immaturity is likely to heighten children’s vulnerability to environmental influences
· Does providing access to maternal stimulus buffer against high amygdala activity (Gee et al., 2014)?
- Children were presented with pictures of their mother or a stranger during fMRI scanning

Question 11

amygdala reactivity (mother vs stranger)

Answer 11

• lower amygdala reactivity response when presented with own mothers image
• dampening effect correlated with strength of parent child relationship

Question 12

emotion regulation

Answer 12

• emotional face go/no-go task

Question 13

false alarm rate

Answer 13

• children’s flase alrm rate for fearful faces improved significantly when seated next to their mother
• improved the most for children who showed the largest maternal buffering effects on the amygdala during fMRI scanning session

Question 14

affective communication - input for development

Answer 14

intersubjectivty -> intimacy, trust, security -> coherence
- physiology and emotion regulation (Feldman, 1999)
- attachment (Isabella, 1989)
- social engagement (Feldman, 2007)
- symbolism )Feldman & Greenbaum, 1997)
- self-formation (Emde, 1983)