Interaction and behaviour imaging: a novel method to measure mother–infant interaction using video 3D reconstruction

International audienceStudying early interaction is essential for understanding development and psychopathology. Automatic computational methods offer the possibility to analyse social signals and behaviours of several partners simultaneously and dynamically. Here, 20 dyads of mothers and their 13–36-month-old infants were videotaped during mother–infant interaction including 10 extremely high-risk and 10 low-risk dyads using two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) sensors. From 2D+3D data and 3D space reconstruction, we extracted individual parameters (quantity of movement and motion activity ratio for each partner) and dyadic parameters related to the dynamics of partners heads distance (contribution to heads distance), to the focus of mutual engagement (percentage of time spent face to face or oriented to the task) and to the dynamics of motion activity (synchrony ratio, overlap ratio, pause ratio). Features are compared with blind global rating of the interaction using the coding interactive behavior (CIB). We found that individual and dyadic parameters of 2D+3D motion features perfectly correlates with rated CIB maternal and dyadic composite scores. Support Vector Machine classification using all 2D–3D motion features classified 100% of the dyads in their group meaning that motion behaviours are sufficient to distinguish high-risk from low-risk dyads. The proposed method may present a promising, low-cost methodology that can uniquely use artificial technology to detect meaningful features of human interactions and may have several implications for studying dyadic behaviours in psychiatry. Combining both global rating scales and computerized methods may enable a continuum of time scale from a summary of entire interactions to second-by-second dynamics

On the role of head motion in affective expression

Non-verbal behavioral cues, such as head movement, play a significant role in human communication and affective expression. Although facial expression and gestures have been extensively studied in the context of emotion understanding, the head motion (which accompany both) is relatively less understood. This paper studies the significance of head movement in adult's affect communication using videos from movies. These videos are taken from the Acted Facial Expression in the Wild (AFEW) database and are labeled with seven basic emotion categories: anger, disgust, fear, joy, neutral, sadness, and surprise. Considering human head as a rigid body, we estimate the head pose at each video frame in terms of the three Euler angles, and obtain a time-series representation of head motion. First, we investigate the importance of the energy of angular head motion dynamics (displacement, velocity and acceleration) in discriminating among emotions. Next, we analyze the temporal variation of head motion by fitting an autoregressive model to the head motion time series. We observe that head motion carries sufficient information to distinguish any emotion from the rest with high accuracy and this information is complementary to that of facial expression as it helps improve emotion recognition accuracy

Staying in Touch: Mothers’ and Infants’ Dyadic Touching Behaviours Across Time, Context, and Risk Status

Touch is the basis of infants’ social, emotional, and cognitive development. Yet, it remains largely understudied in developmental research. A series of three studies were designed to expand our limited knowledge of parents’ and infants’ touching behaviours, including the synchrony of maternal-infant touch, across various types of parent-child interactions over time. Study 1 utilized an extensive longitudinal design whereby healthy mother-infant dyads (N=12) were observed at 1-, 3-, 5-, 7-, and 9-months postpartum and within two normative interaction contexts (face-to-face; floor play). Study 2 implemented a longitudinal research design whereby typically developing newborns, mothers, and fathers (N=22) were observed immediately after birth and following the physiological stress of labor/delivery, and again 3- months later, following the social stress of maternal emotional unavailability via the Still-Face procedure (SF; Tronick et al., 1978). Study 3 used a cross-sectional research design examining mother-infant dyads (N=41) with high vs. low risk of maternal depressive symptomatology during instances of infant crying within the context of the SF and Separation (SP; Field et al., 1986) procedures at 4-months postpartum. Overall, results revealed that touch is a pervasive and extensive communicative modality for both infants and parents, including those at-risk, within normative and perturbed contexts, starting from birth and across the first 9-months of life. Study 1 demonstrated that during typical/playful mother-infant interactions from 1- to 9-months postpartum, dyads initially displayed behavioural matching and later transitioned toward synchronous patterns entailing the parallel use of complementary types of touch. Study 2 revealed that mothers and infants displayed an inverse pattern of tactile synchrony (coordinated, converse changes in touch) from the immediate postpartum period to the reunion period of the SF procedure 3-months later. In Study 3, mothers and infants displayed a positive pattern of tactile synchrony (coordinated, analogous changes in touch) within the context of infant crying at 4-months postpartum. However, dyads in the high depression group displayed significantly less affectionate touch. Among other findings, results from all three studies underscored the soothing and regulatory functions of touch. Findings meaningfully contribute to our knowledge of early parent-infant dynamics and support a direction toward comprehensive examinations of touch across infancy

Toward a second-person neuroscience

LS & BT : equal contributions (shared first-authorship)Peer reviewedPreprin

General dynamics of the physical-chemical systems in mammals

Biodynamic regulator chain models for physical chemical systems in mammal

Disentangling the dyadic dance: Theoretical, methodological and outcomes systematic review of mother-infant dyadic processes

Background: During the last decades, the research on mother-infant dyad has produced a great amount of data, methods and theories, which largely contributed to set a revolution in the way we look at developmental changes during infancy and childhood. Very different constructs depict the different aspects of the "dyadic dance" occurring between a mother and her infant; nonetheless, a comprehensive and consistent systematization of these concepts in a coherent theoretical landscape is still lacking. Aim: In the present work, we aim at disentangling the different theoretical and methodological definitions of 9 dyadic constructs and we highlight their effects on infants' and children developmental outcomes. Methods: A literature search has been conducted on three databases-PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science. Three different reviews are reported here: (1) a review on the theoretical definitions of dyadic constructs; (2) a review of operational definitions, settings and methods of dyadic processes; (3) a systematic review of dyadic processes' outcomes for infants' and children developmental trajectories. Results: Two constructs emerged as wide meta-theoretical concepts (reciprocity and mutuality) and seven described specific processes (attunement, contingency, coordination, matching, mirroring, reparation, synchrony). A global model resuming the relationships among different processes is reported, which highlights the emergence of two specific cycles of dyadic functioning (i.e., matching-mismatching-reparation-synchrony; contingency, coordination, attunement, mirroring). A comprehensive review of the adopted measures is also provided. Finally, all the processes provided significant contributions to infants' behavioral, cognitive, and socio-emotional development during the first 3 years of age, but limited research has been conducted on specific processes (e.g. reparation and mirroring). Conclusion: The present study provides an original research-grounded framework to consider the different nature of mother-infant dyadic processes within a unified dyadic eco-system. Different levels of evidence emerged for the role of diverse mother-infant dyadic processes on infants' and children development. Open questions and future research directions are highlighted

Infant touching behaviours during mother-infant face-to-face interactions : effects of changes in maternal emotional and physical availability in normative and at-risk populations

Mother-infant interactions are fundamental to infant socio-emotional development. Through mutually regulated exchanges in the first year of life, infants develop critical communicative and regulatory skills. Infant touch is a central channel through which infants communicate their underlying affective states, regulate their emotions, and explore their surroundings. Yet despite its importance, there is a paucity of research examining infant touch. The current dissertation was designed to investigate infants' touching behaviours during mother-infant face-to-face interactions. A series of two studies investigating infant touch in the context of infants' other communicative modalities during interactions with variations in maternal availability was conducted. Study 1 examined how touch co-occurs with distal modalities (i.e. gaze, affect), and investigated the functions of touch (i.e. communicative, regulatory, exploratory). Findings revealed that touch is organized with gaze and affect into meaningful affective displays, and that infants use touch to self-regulate and explore when mothers are emotionally unavailable. The impact of the quality of the relationship (i.e. maternal emotional availability indicators, such as sensitivity and hostility) on infants' touching behaviours was also examined. Findings demonstrated greater engagement through touch in infants with more sensitive mothers. Study 2 investigated infants' touching behaviours in an at-risk sample of depressed and non-depressed mothers exhibiting poor relationship indicators (i.e. sub-optimal emotional availability). Touch was compared during periods of emotional versus physical unavailability, revealing greater reactive types of touch during physical unavailability. Findings also highlighted the impact of maternal risk on infants' touching behaviours: infants of depressed mothers exhibited more reactive types of touch compared to infants of non-depressed mothers, and negative relationship indicators (e.g. maternal hostility, intrusiveness) predicted regulatory tactile behaviours. Taken together, the present findings contribute to current knowledge on touch during early socio-emotional development. Results underscore that infants are active participants during their social exchanges and that they vary their tactile behaviours as a function of maternal availability. The findings clarify how infants use touch (i.e. to regulate, explore) when mothers are unavailable, and imply that touch serves a communicative role during pre-verbal development. Finally, this research offers insight into the impact of maternal risk on infants' regulatory abilities and the dyadic processes of co-regulatio

Scaffoldings of the affective mind

publication-status: Acceptedtypes: ArticleIn this paper we adopt Sterelny’s (2010) framework of the scaffolded mind, and its related dimensional approach, to highlight the many ways in which human affectivity (and not just cognition) is environmentally supported. After discussing the relationship between the scaffolded-mind view and related frameworks, such as the “extended-mind” view, we illustrate the many ways in which our affective states are environmentally supported by items of material culture, other people, and their interplay. To do so, we draw on empirical evidence from various disciplines (sociology, ethnography, developmental psychology), and develop phenomenological considerations to distinguish different ways in which we experience the world in affectivity

Developmental perspectives on interpersonal affective touch

In the last decade, philosophy, neuroscience and psychology alike have paid increasing attention to the study of interpersonal affective touch, which refers to the emotional and motivational facets of tactile sensation. Some aspects of affective touch have been linked to a neurophysiologically specialised system, namely the C tactile (CT) system. While the role of this sys-tem for affiliation, social bonding and communication of emotions have been widely investigated, only recently researchers have started to focus on the potential role of interpersonal affective touch in acquiring awareness of the body as our own, i.e. as belonging to our psychological ‘self’. We review and discuss recent developmental and adult findings, pointing to the central role of interpersonal affective touch in body awareness and social cognition in health and disorders. We propose that interpersonal affective touch, as an interoceptive modality invested of a social nature, can uniquely contribute to the ongoing debate in philosophy about the primacy of the relational nature of the minimal self

Developmental Perspectives on Interpersonal Affective Touch

In the last decade, philosophy, neuroscience and psychology alike have paid increasing attention to the study of interpersonal affective touch, which refers to the emotional and motivational facets of tactile sensation. Some aspects of affective touch have been linked to a neurophysiologically specialised system, namely the C tactile (CT) system. While the role of this system for affiliation, social bonding and communication of emotions have been widely investigated, only recently researchers have started to focus on the potential role of interpersonal affective touch in acquiring awareness of the body as our own, i.e. as belonging to our psychological ‘self’. We review and discuss recent developmental and adult findings, pointing to the central role of interpersonal affective touch in body awareness and social cognition in health and disorders. We propose that interpersonal affective touch, as an interoceptive modality invested of a social nature, can uniquely contribute to the ongoing debate in philosophy about the primacy of the relational nature of the minimal self