PSYCHOBIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF INFANT CRYING

This study addresses the relationship between the amount of infant cry ing and maternal responsiveness to the infant's facial communicative c ues during distress and non-distress situations. From an evolutionary perspective, the interpretation of infant crying as a communicative si gnal is preferred over its distance-regulating function. This view imp lies a relation between the amount of infant crying and parameters des cribing interactional regulation. Maternal responsiveness is operation alized by (a) the contingent reactions in a latency time span which de fine the intuitive character of parental behaviours (200-800 ms) and b y (b) an event-based coding system of maternal inappropriate behaviour . Infant states (crying, fussing, sleeping and waking hours) were asse ssed by means of diaries kept by the mothers. In two samples (N=10, N= 13, respectively), married, middle-class mothers were videotaped in fr ee play situations with their healthy, firstborn children in their fam ily homes. Results show that there is a strong intersituational consis tency of maternal behaviour, but context-sensitive components of mater nal behaviour could also be found. The contingency of maternal reactio ns during the free play situation can be regarded as a predictor of th e duration of the infant's crying measured by a maternal diary. The wh ole pattern of the results confirms the regulatory function of infant crying in the context of early caregiver-child interactions.