Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences Graduate School of Child Development and Education
Master Thesis
Is Infants’ Emotional Communication Affected by Parents’ Communicative Abilities? An Investigation on the role of Parents’ Empathy and Theory of Mind Abilities.
Master:
Youth at Risk, Academic year 2018-2019 (Semester 2, Period 1-3) Student: Maria Gerdelmann 12278637 maria.gerdelmann@student.uva.nl Supervisor(s): Drs. Eliala A. Salvadori e.a.salvadori@uva.nl Dr. Cristina Colonnesi c.colonnesi@uva.nl Coordinator: Dr. Eddie Brummelman e.brummelman@uva.nl
Abstract
Infants’ first way of emotional communication is synchronizing gaze directions and facial expressions. The current study investigated the relation of parents’ and infants’ emotional communication, and examined the impact of the parents’ empathy and Theory of Mind abilities. We observed 52 infants (mean age of 8 months) during a face-to-face interaction with independently their mother and father. The intra-personal synchrony of parents’/infants’ gaze direction on/off the interaction partner while smiling with three different intensities (from low to high) was investigated. Results revealed a link between parents’ and infants’ emotional communication, which was influenced by the smiling intensity. Whereas for moderately intensive smiling no significant results were found, smiling with a low or high intensity was related to infants’ emotional communication. Parents’ empathy did not impact their own or infants’ emotional communication, except for fathers’ Empathic Concern scores. Mothers’ ToM abilities significantly played a role for both their own and infants’ emotional communication. Findings contribute to the research on infants’ early emotional
communication. In means of gaining insight into the big picture of emotional communication, further research is needed to investigate the role of infants’ dispositional empathy and ToM abilities, and to also take inter-personal synchrony into account.
Communication is a core competence in social relationships and without it, humanity as we know it, would not be existing (Runcan, Constantineanu, Ielics, & Popa, 2012). The foundation for humans’ ability to interact with other people is early emotional communication (Wider, 2007). Emotional communication refers to the coordination of gaze direction,
(positive and negative) facial expressions, and vocalizations (Colonnesi, Zijlstra, van der Zande, & Bögels, 2012; Yale, Messinger, Cobo-Lewis, & Delgado, 2003). It can be defined as intra-personal synchrony, which is the internal synchronization of emotional
communicative behaviors (i.e. gaze, facial expressions, and vocalization) within the same person (i.e. the infant, the adult), and as inter-personal synchrony, which is the external synchronization of emotional communicative behaviors between two interaction partners (i.e. the infant and the adult; Colonnesi et al., 2012).
Since expressing positive emotions by showing different smiles is a key characteristic of social development (Messinger, Fogel, & Dickson, 1999), it is important to differentiate social smiles in different levels. Generally, smiling is characterized by raising corners of the lips, eye constriction, raising of the cheeks and opening of the mouth (Messinger, Fogel, & Dickson, 2001). For infants, positive facial expressions involve four smiling types: 1) the simple smile (low intensity), which means a (partially or completely) closed smile with no further eye constriction; 2) the play smile (moderate intensity), which can be recognized by an open smile including a round mouth with no further eye constriction; 3) the Duchenne smile (moderate intensity), which is a closed smile with further eye constriction; and 4) the Duplay smile (high intensity) which includes an open and round mouth and further eye constriction (Messinger & Fogel, 2007). In the literature, parents’ different smiling intensities are not referred as simple, play, Duchenne or Duplay smile. Messinger & Fogel (2007) defined those terms only for children, but not for adults. However, to avoid ambiguity in the present paper, parents’ social smiles were divided into three intensities as well. Hence, we differentiated
smiles with a low intensity (only slightly noticeable smiles, e.g. raising the corners of the mouth a little bit), with a moderate intensity (clearly expressed smiles, e.g. smiling with an open mouth) and with a high intensity (distinct smiles, which are even more intensive than the moderate one; the maximum in the adults’ expressiveness of a smile).
Moreover, emotional communication serves the function of modulating emotional states (Creighton, 2011), and therefore it represents an important milestone for infants’ further development of emotional control and self-regulation (Wider, 2007). Humans’ modalities of non-verbal communication develop throughout their first months of life, as a means to share positive or negative emotions, mitigate distress, or simply connect to parents (Creighton, 2011). Crucially, communication and particularly emotional communication, is an important requirement for parent-child relationships (Robinson, Little, & Biringen, 1993; Runcan et al., 2012), as it shapes their emotional and affectional bond (generally referred as Attachment; Creighton, 2011). Furthermore, previous research already revealed links between children’s socio-communicative functioning and later ToM abilities (Charman, Baron-Cohen,
Swettenham, Baird, Cox, & Drew, 2000; Olineck & Poulin-Dubois, 2005; Wellman, Phillips, Dunphy-Lelii, & LaLonde, 2004). Charman and colleagues (2000), for instance, found out that 1,6-years old children’s shared attention with an adult on a toy was related to the children’s ToM abilities at the age of 3,6 years (Charman et al., 2000).
During the first months of life, infants’ social and emotional development occurs through permanent and repetitive interactions with their parents (Guedeney et al., 2011). In infants’ everyday life, there are several opportunities to develop social-emotional abilities, especially by observing and/or imitating their primary caregivers while interacting with them or with other people (Bandura, 1977; Waismeyer & Meltzoff, 2017; Repacholi & Meltzoff, 2007). Since these observational mechanisms are transferable to a broad spectrum of infants’ developmental tasks, it is plausible to assume that emotional communication is also
something that infants internalize and mature by observing the behavior of their parents. However, no study has yet investigated the specific relation between parents’ and infants’ emotional communication. What we know so far is, there is evidence for intergenerational transmission of empathy (Barnett, King, Howard, & Dino, 1980; Fabes, Eisenberg, & Miller, 1990; Strayer & Roberts, 2004; Trommsdorff, 1991) and ToM abilities (Sabbagh & Seamans, 2008). For instance, Strayer and Roberts (2004) found evidence for a link between the
children’s (5-13 years old) empathy abilities and their parents’ empathy. In addition, Sabbagh and Seamans (2008) determined a positive relation between ToM scores of 3-year-old
children and their parents’ ToM scores.
Empathy, which is defined as the ability to understand and share the feelings of
another, consists of a multidimensional interplay between affective and cognitive components (Davis, 1980, 1983). Affective empathy is the automatic appropriate response to another persons’ emotions (Bensalah, Caillies, & Anduze, 2016). It includes abilities like having feelings of sympathy and concern for others (known as Empathic Concern) and feelings of personal anxiety and uneasiness (known as Personal Distress). Cognitive empathy refers to the ability to understand other people’s emotional states (known as Perspective-Taking; Alterman, McDermott, Cacciola, & Rutherford, 2003; Bensalah et al., 2016; Davis, 1980, 1983; De Corte et al., 2007; Eisenberg & Fabes, 1990). In the process of child development, empathy capacity is essential to foster beneficial attitudes towards others, to have positive and meaningful social interactions. Hence, having empathy abilities is necessary for becoming a socially competent person (McDonald & Messinger, 2011).
Perspective taking abilities are also commonly known as ToM abilities. ToM is a core competence of social understanding and necessary for understanding our own and others’ mental states (e.g., intentions, beliefs, desires; Bensalah et al., 2016). As know from previous research, ToM abilities are essential for children’s linguistic and socio-emotional
development (Bensalah et al., 2016; Ibanez et al., 2013; Sabbagh & Seamans, 2008). In order to investigate parents’ communicative abilities as a key competence of parenting (Robinson et al., 1993; Runcan et al., 2012), it seems important to consider possible underlying conditions, which plays an influencing role on the parents’ early communication with their offspring. Since parents’ emotional communication requires the ability to recognize infants’ shifts in eye gazing, facial expression, and vocalizations (Robinson et al., 1993), it is conceivable that there is a possible link between parents’ emotional communication and their (affective and cognitive) empathy and/or ToM abilities. This is because all three abilities (emotional communication, empathy, ToM) involve related mechanisms, namely sharing other’s emotions, understanding states of ourselves /other people and recognizing others’
expressions. Although no scientific evidence for that is existing yet, a link between parents’ emotional communication and both empathy and ToM seems plausible because related connections (concerning social-communicative abilities and ToM) for children already were investigated (Charman et al. 2000; Olineck & Poulin-Dubois, 2005; Wellman et al., 2004)
Additionally, although the importance of emotional communication for infants’ later social and emotional development is well established, very little is known about how parents’ abilities influence infants’ early emotional communication. Since we know that emotional communication develops during early social interactions (mostly during interactions with their parent, as infants spend most of their time with parents; Guedeney et al., 2011), it is plausible to assume that parents both directly (with their own emotional communication abilities during social interactions) and indirectly (with parents’ individual dispositions) influence infants’ early communicative abilities. Therefore, more research is needed, regarding the investigation of potential parental influences on their offspring’s emotional communication abilities.
In the current study, we aimed to shed light on the link between parents’ and infants’ emotional communication, and to understand which role parental socio-emotional
dispositions and communicative abilities play. The first research question takes into account to what extent infants’ emotional communication abilities’ are related to parents’ abilities in emotional communication. Emotional communication was measured by the intra-personal synchrony of the infants’/adults’ internal synchronization of emotional communicative
behaviors, i.e. the duration of eye gaze on the interaction partner while social smiling, and the duration of gazing off the interaction partner. It is hypothesized that parents who engage in longer episodes of emotional communication during early parent-infant-interactions at infants age of 8 months, have infants that also show longer emotional communicative behaviors (Beebe & Steele, 2013; Feldman, 2012; Guedeney et al., 2011; Hsu & Fogel, 2011; Isabella & Belsky, 1991; Sabbagh & Seamans, 2008).
The following two research questions cover an investigation of the influence of parents’ individual dispositions in relation to their own/their offspring’s’ emotional
communication abilities. Namely, with the second research question, we aimed to assess the extent to what parents’ emotional communication abilities are related to parents’ self-reported dispositional empathy and ToM abilities. It is hypothesized that parents who engage in longer episodes of emotional communication with their children also self-reported higher levels of empathy and/or ToM abilities (Charman et al., 2000; Olineck & Poulin-Dubois, 2005; Wellman et al., 2004).
The third research question considers to what extent 8-month-old infants’ emotional communication is related to their parents’ self-reported dispositional empathy and ToM abilities. It is hypothesized that infants that show longer emotional communication during early parent-infant-interactions have parents who self-reported higher levels of empathy
and/or ToM abilities (Charman et al., 2000; Olineck & Poulin-Dubois, 2005; Wellman et al., 2004).
Method Participants
The sample of the current study consisted of 52 parent-infant dyads, participating in a larger longitudinal study on children’s socio-communicative development over the first two years of life. For the current study, the home-visit observations collected at infants’ age of 8 months (plus/minus two weeks) were used. At the observation time, the infants’ (22 females) mean age was 8.21 months (SD = 0.31, range: 7.45-8.87 months), and the parents’ mean age was 36.39 years (SD = 4.13, range: 28.49-47.94 years; mothers 34.63 years, SD = 3.49, range: 28.49-42.50; fathers 38.16 years, SD = 4.00, range: 31.37-47.94). The families lived in
Amsterdam and surrounding areas. About 78% of the parents were born in the Netherlands, 2% in Germany, 2% in the United States of America. Born in Luxemburg, Mexico, Romania, Iran, Brazil, Portugal, Suriname, Poland, France, Switzerland, Japan or England were each 1% and for around 6% of the parents, the country of birth is unknown. All parents fluently spoke Dutch or English. The majority of parents (around 93%) had a high educational level (postsecondary school education or university). The resting 7% of the parents had a low level of education (basic school to secondary school). Participants were recruited via: the UvA baby lab contact list, contact with professionals (e.g. teachers), social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram) and flyering at family-friendly locations (e.g. family cafes,
kindergartens, schools, etc.). The present study was approved by the ethics committee of the UvA in 2017 under the number 7403.
Procedure
Before the observation itself, parents were asked to fill out an online questionnaire booklet which included several questionnaires (e.g. regarding socio-demographics). To
measure parents’ ToM abilities, the “Reading the Mind in the Eyes” test (RME; Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plum, 2001) was used. This test includes 36 black-and-white pictures of peoples’ eye area from eyebrow to nose. Respondents were displayed 4 choices of mental state adjectives and asked to select the best matching adjective (Sabbagh & Seamans, 2008). The RME was filled out by the parents when their child was 4 months old.
Parents’ self-reported dispositional (affective and cognitive) empathy was measured by using “The Interpersonal Reactivity Index” (IRI; Davis, 1980, 1983) which parents
completed when the infant was 8 months old. Consisting of four subscales (7 items each), the IRI evaluates different empathy-related aspects. The Perspective-Taking (PT) scale assesses the tendency in peoples’ daily life to embrace others’ points of views. The scale of Personal Distress (PD) measures peoples’ own feelings of indisposition and discomfort in response to the emotions of others. In the Empathic Concern (EC) subscale, the tendency to concern about or pity other people is determined (De Korte et al., 2007). The fourth subscale of the IRI (namely the Fantasy scale) was excluded for the purpose of this study. Although the RME and the IRI were not filled out by the parents at the same time point, we did not expect differences due to time differences since empathy and ToM abilities are being indexes of parents’
individual dispositions.
In order to collect social interaction environments as naturalistic as possible, the observations took place in the families’ homes (during home visits of two trained
researchers), ensuring therefore ecological validity of the data. After introducing themselves, the researchers provided the parents with information about the planned observation, asked the parents to sign a participation agreement and gave instructions about the procedure. For the early naturalist observation, the infant-parent dyads were arranged in a triadic setting. The parent was sitting at a table and the infant was seated in a baby chair in an angle next to him. Between them, a 360° Samsung Camera was placed so both parent and infant could be
recorded simultaneously (see Figure 1). Each parent separately had a dyadic interaction with the baby for two minutes in a way as he/she would normally do in everyday life. Furthermore, the parents were informed that the observation could be interrupted or discontinued at any time, in case the infant showed some distressed or tiredness. Depending on the predetermined counter-balance condition, either the father or the mother started with the observation, while the other attendees (parent, researchers, siblings) left the room to avoid distractions during the observation. The recording process was controlled by the researchers via a mobile phone which was connected to the camera and displayed live the interaction.
Figure 1. Setting triadic interaction 8-months.
Coding System for Intra-Personal Emotional Communication
The modalities for intra-personal emotional communication were micro-coded (<1sec) separately for both parents and infants by using the computer software Observer XT 13.0 (Noldus, Trienes, Hendriksen, Jansen, & Jansen, 2000). According to the original coding protocol for infants’ emotional communication (Colonnesi et al., 2012), the coding for this study was adapted and for both parents’ and infants’ emotional communication, the following behaviors were coded: Eye gaze, vocalizations (of infants), verbalizations (of adults) and facial expressions. For the purpose of this study, infants’ vocalizations/adults’ verbalizations were not taken into account. Moreover, only positive (vs. negative and neutral) facial
expressions were included, as during early naturalistic observations at the families’ home, very little variability of negative expressions was expected (Aktar, Colonnesi, de Vente, Majdandžić, & Bögels, 2017).
Eye gazing was operationalized as an index of infants’/parents’ attention towards a) the face or b) the body of the interaction partner or c) elsewhere. Social smiling measured the infants’/parents’ positive affect on a range of positive facial expressions, with three different intensities. We coded social smiles as smile 1 (for infants: simple smile, for parents: smile with a low intensity), smile 2 (for infants: play or Duchenne smile, for parents: smile with a moderate intensity) and smile 3 (for infants: Duplay smile, for parents: smile with a high intensity; see figure 2). Both infants’/parents’ eye gazing and social smiles were coded as state events (events with a clear start and end time point, duration in seconds) and coded in half speed of the video.
Figure 2. Coding scheme of infants’ smiling types paired with intensity level (Messinger & Fogel, 2007).
Statistical Approach Study variables
Intra-personal emotional communication
In order to measure infants’/parents’ emotional communication as intra-personal synchrony of the duration of eye gazing to the interaction partner’s face and body while social smiling, and the duration of gazing off the interaction partner, a data profile was created with the Observer. With this profile that we computed, the intra-personal behaviors of the dyadic observations were exported as durations (in seconds) of the following behaviors: a)
infants’/parents’ co-occurrence of eye gazing on the interaction partner (gazing on the partner’s body and face were merged) and showing a smile 1, b) infants’/parents’
co-occurrence of eye gazing on the interaction partner and showing a smile 2, c) infants’/parents’ co-occurrence of eye gazing on the interaction partner and showing a smile 3 and d)
infants’/parents’ duration of gazing off the interaction partner. After exporting the data, the duration of infants’/parents’ gazing on the interaction partner while smiling with a low, moderate or high intensity and gazing off the interaction partner was calculated in relation to the duration of the whole observation time (in proportions). High durations of gazing on the interaction partner while smiling were seen as indicators of high intra-personal emotional communication abilities, whereas high durations of gazing off the interaction partner referred to low intra-personal emotional communication abilities.
Parents’ dispositional empathy and ToM abilities
To compute the final empathy scores, negative items of the IRI first were reversed (Davis, 1980). Then, IRI subscales for PT, PD, and EC were created. Estimates of internal consistency (Cronbach Alpha’s) of the three subscales were: for mothers’ PT α = .622 and for fathers’ PT α = .767, for mothers’ PD α = .748 and for fathers’ PD α = .744, for mothers’ EC α = .670 and for fathers’ α = .700. Those scores were equivalent to scores of the Dutch
population (α = .70; Duriez, 2004). As final ToM score, the sum of the correct answers of the RME was used. Estimates of internal consistency (Cronbach Alpha’s) of the ToM score was for mothers α = .192 and for fathers α = .567.
Analytical strategy
By means of answering the three research questions, firstly, correlation analyses were run to see if there was a significant relation between the particular study variables. Secondly, if there was a significant correlation between certain variables, linear and multiple regression analyses were further run. For the correlation analyses, the Spearman’s Rho (rs) and the
significance level (p) were reported (significance level with a = 0.05), whereas for the regression analyses, the unstandardized beta value (B), the t distribution (t), the significance level (p), the F value (F) and the R square (R2)and were reported.
Results Data preparation and preliminary analyses
Prior to running the main analyses, preliminary analyses showed that for 11 parents (10.58% of the total sample; 3.85% mothers, 6.73% fathers), no dyadic observations were collected. Regarding to measure parents’ dispositional empathy, for 21 parents (20.19% of the total sample; 5.77% mothers, 14.42% fathers) the data of the IRI was missing. For 4 parents (3.85% of the total sample; 0.96% mothers, 2.88% fathers), the data for ToM abilities was missing. Those missing values (data of the 8-months observations, scores of dispositional empathy and ToM abilities) were missing due to not occurred observations and missing or incomplete questionnaires filled out by the parents. Although there were high percentages of missing data, we did no estimate the data for the purpose of this study.
Univariate outliers’ inspections of the data were carried out by checking z-scores for values exceeding ± 3.29. Variables including outliers were adjusted by modifying the value to the closest observed value. Normality of the data was assessed by checking skewness and
kurtosis and dividing them by their standard errors. When exceeding one standard deviation ± 1.96, the variable was assumed to significantly deviate from normality (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2013). Most of the variables were not normally distributed. However, for the purpose of this study, further analysis was run without applying transformations. Since the data of the sample was not normally distributed, the Spearman’s Rho with non-parametric correlation tests was used to analyze the relation between the different outcome variables.
Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics of the experimental variables. Within the three different smile intensities, infants mostly showed a play or Duchenne smile while gazing on parents (on mothers M = 16.38%, on fathers M = 11.58%). Moreover, infants gazed longer off the father (M = 40.17%) than off the mother (M = 30.92%). For parents, the smile that was shown the longest while gazing on the child was for mothers a moderately intense smile (M = 37.09%) and for fathers a lowly intense smile (M = 34.41%).
Table 1
Descriptive statistics of infants’ and parents’ intra-personal emotional communication, parents’ dispositional empathy and ToM abilities
Variables M SD Range
Child
1. Gaze on mother + smile 1 13.81 10.23 0.38-37.98
2. Gaze on mother + smile 2 16.37 14.19 0.00-58.33
3. Gaze on mother + smile 3 1.39 3,16 0.00-18.10
4. Gaze off mother 30.92 22.86 0.91-90.41
5. Gaze on father + smile 1 9.29 7.87 0.00-34.09
6. Gaze on father + smile 2 11.58 11.75 0.00-53.52
7. Gaze on father + smile 3 1.20 3.36 0.00-20.30
8. Gaze off father 40.17 22.20 0.35-77.75
Mother
9. Gaze on child + smile 1 28.31 13.78 0.91-68.78
10. Gaze on child + smile 2 37.09 16.34 0.00-80.19
11. Gaze on child + smile 3 3.30 5.02 0.00-22.69
12. Gaze off child 2.43 3,49 0.00-19.16
13. Perspective Taking 18.98 3.36 9-25
14. Empathic Concern 20.09 4.00 13-28
15. Personal Distress 10.58 4.90 0-22
16. ToM 26.02 3.35 17-35
Father
17. Gaze on child + smile 1 34.41 14.42 8.31-81.07
18. Gaze on child + smile 2 31.07 19.59 0.00-78.73
19. Gaze on child + smile 3 1.65 3.64 0.00-19.58
20. Gaze off child 2.29 2.76 0.00-10.08
21. PT 17.03 4.60 6-26
22. EC 15.51 4.03 5-23
23. PD 10.69 3.47 3-17
24. ToM 25.59 3.41 17-32
Note. 1.-12., 17.-20. = Percentage of total duration, PT = Perspective Taking scale, EC = Empathic
Concern scale; PD = Personal Distress scale; ToM = Theory of Mind scale
Infants’ and Parents’ Intra-Personal Emotional Communication
As displayed in table 2, the relation between the infants’ and parents’ intra-personal emotional communication was investigated by means of bivariate correlation analysis. Since 6 variables (infants’ gaze on father while showing a simple and a Duplay smile, mothers’ gaze on infant while showing a play/Duchenne smile, fathers’ gaze on infant while showing a simple smile, and both mothers’ and fathers’ off infant) of the total of 16 variables for
measuring infants’/parents’ intra-personal emotional communication were not significantly correlated to any other variable, range rs from -.264 to .284, p from .053 to .999, those
variables were dropped for the main analysis.
Following, simple and multiple regression analyses were used to explore the relations between the different behaviors of infants’ and parents’ intra-personal synchrony. A simple linear regression was calculated to predict the duration of infants’ gaze on the mother while showing a simple smile based on the mothers’ gaze on the infant while showing a highly intense smile, B = 0.639, t(45) =2.216, p = .032. A significant regression equation was found,
F(1, 45) = 4.913, p = .032, with an R2 of 0.098. Hence, an increase in mothers’ gaze on the
infant while showing a highly intense smile by 1%, increased the duration of infants’ gaze on the mother while showing a smile with low intensity by 63.9%.
Moreover, the duration of infants’ gaze on the mother while showing a play/Duchenne simple was predicted by mothers’ gaze on the infant while showing a simple smile, B = -0.367, t(45) =-2.561, p = .014 and a significant regression equation was found, F(1, 45) = 6.558, p = .014, with an R2 of 0.127. Thus, an increase in mothers’ gaze on the infant while
showing a smile with low intensity by 1%, decreased the duration of infants’ gaze on the mother while showing a play/Duchenne smile by 36.7%.
Furthermore, a multiple regression was used to predict the duration of infants’ gaze on the father while showing a play/Duchenne smile by the duration of fathers’ gaze on the infant while showing both a moderately intense smile (B = 0.265, t(43) = 3.336, p = .002) and a highly intense smile (B = 0.821, t(43) = 1.919, p = .062). A significant regression equation was found for fathers’ gaze on the infant while showing a play/Duchenne smile F(2, 43) = 7.091, p = .002, with an R2 of 0.248 but not for fathers’ gaze on the infant while showing a Duplay smile. According to that, an increase in fathers’ gaze on the infant while showing a smile with low intensity by 1%, increased the duration of infants’ gaze on the father while
showing a play/Duchenne smile by 26.5%. Contrarily, the duration of fathers’ gaze on the infant while showing a highly intense smile did not significantly explain the variance of infants’ gaze on the father while showing a moderate smile.
Another multiple regression was performed to predict the duration of infants’ gaze on the mother while showing a Duplay smile by mothers’ gaze on the infant while showing a smile with low intensity and fathers’ gaze on the infant while showing a smile with high intensity. Results showed that both the duration of mothers’ gaze on the infant while showing a smile with low intensity and fathers’ gaze on the infant while showing a smile with high intensity did not significantly account for the variance of infants’ gaze on the mother while showing a Duplay smile.
Following, by using another multiple regression, the duration of mothers’ gaze on the infant while showing both a smile with low intensity (B = 0.260, t(37) = 1.027, p = .311) and a smile with high intensity (B = -0.816, t(37) = -1.120, p = .270), and the duration of fathers’ gaze on the infant while showing a smile with high intensity (B = -1.452, t(37) = -1.583, p = .122) was assessed to predict the duration of infants’ gaze off the mother. No significant regression equation was found and hence, the variance of infants’ gaze off the mother did not significantly account for any of the predictors.
Furthermore, the duration of infants’ gaze off the father was predicted by fathers’ gaze on the infant while showing a smile with high intensity, B = -1.939, t(44) = -2.223, p = .031 and a significant regression equation was found, F(1, 44) = 4.943, p = .031, with an R2 of
.101. Hence, an increase in fathers’ gaze on the infant while showing a smile with high intensity by 1%, decreased the duration of infants’ gaze off the father by 194%.
Table 2
Spearman’s Rho (rs) correlations between the infants’ and adults’ intra-personal emotional communication behaviors during the dyadic interaction. Parent Mother Father Child Gaze on child + smile 1 Gaze on child + smile 2 Gaze on child + smile 3 Gaze off child Gaze on child + smile 1 Gaze on child + smile 2 Gaze on child + smile 3 Gaze off child Gaze on mother + smile 1 -.13 .07 .385** .00 .08 .13 -.15 .22 Gaze on mother + smile 2 -.404** .28 .21 .11 .02 .18 .04 .01 Gaze on mother + smile 3 -.305* .05 .16 .26 .03 .03 -.391* .20
Gaze off mother .387** -.15 -.299* .28 .13 -.02 -.336* -.01
Gaze on father + smile 1 -.06 .03 -.16 .03 .08 .26 .03 -.20 Gaze on father + smile 2 -.16 .04 -.01 .28 -.18 .319* .319* -.20 Gaze on father + smile 3 -.19 .19 -.03 .05 .12 .20 .05 -.03
Gaze off father .14 -.10 .09 -.18 .05 -.26 -.422** .17
Parents’ Intra-Personal Emotional Communication, Dispositional Empathy and ToM
As visible in table 3, the relation between the parents’ intra-personal synchrony of emotional communication and their self-reported dispositional empathy and ToM abilities was investigated by using bivariate correlation analysis. Only two significant correlations were found. On the one hand, results showed a significantly positive correlation between mothers’ ToM score and the duration of their gaze on the infant while showing a highly intense smile, rs (32) = 0.356, p = .015. On the other hand, a significantly negative correlation
between fathers’ Empathic Concern score and the duration of their gaze on the infant while showing a highly intense smile was found, rs (22) = -.404, p = .022. All of the other variables
concerning parents’ empathy, ToM abilities and intra-personal synchrony did not show any significances. Hence, regression analyses were solely run for the above-mentioned variables.
Indeed, to predict the duration of mothers’ gaze on the infant while showing a highly intense smile by their ToM abilities, a simple regression analysis was calculated, B = 0.004,
t(44) =2.117, p = .040. A significant regression equation was found, F(1, 44) = 4.481, p =
.040, with an R2 of 0.092. Hence, an increase in mothers’ ToM score by 1 point, increased the
duration of mothers’ gaze on the infant while showing a highly intense smile by 0.45%. The second regression analysis was calculated to predict fathers’ duration of gaze on the infant while showing a highly intense smile based on their Empathic Concern score, B = -2.214, t(30) =-2.214, p = .035. A significant regression equation was found, F(1, 30) = 4.900,
p = .035, with an R2 of 0.140. Contrarily to the first regression analysis, the second one
showed that an increase in fathers’ Empathic Concern score by 1 point, decreased the duration of their gaze on the infant while showing a highly intense smile by 0.38%.
Table 3
Spearman’s Rho (rs) correlations between the parents’ intra-personal emotional communication behaviors and parents’ dispositional empathy and ToM abilities. Parent Mother Father Parent Gaze on child + smile 1 Gaze on child + smile 2 Gaze on child + smile 3 Gaze off child Gaze on child + smile 1 Gaze on child + smile 2 Gaze on child + smile 3 Gaze off child Mother PT -.16 -.08 .10 -.06 .09 .05 .03 .14 EC .02 -.05 -.12 -.11 -.07 -.07 .01 .03 PD .05 .18 -.18 -.07 .15 .10 -.17 .17 ToM -.06 .17 .356* -.02 .10 .11 -.13 .12 Father PT -.39 .46 .28 -.26 .27 .07 -.09 .23 EC -.29 .29 .42 .04 .14 .18 -.404* .19 PD -.09 -.14 .03 .08 .28 .08 .16 .01 ToM -.03 .19 -.12 .07 .20 .12 .10 .09
Table 4
Spearman’s Rho (rs) correlations between the infants’ intra-personal emotional communication behaviors and parents’ dispositional empathy and ToM abilities. Child Parent Gaze on mother + smile 1 Gaze on mother + smile 2 Gaze on mother + smile 3 Gaze off mother Gaze on father + smile 1 Gaze on father + smile 2 Gaze on father + smile 3 Gaze off father Mother PT -.09 -.27 -.08 -.02 -.01 -.24 -.12 .19 EC -.23 -.15 -.15 .07 -.01 -.22 -.17 .12 PD -.11 .07 .05 .02 -.14 -.26 -.10 .09 ToM .304* .07 .323* -.02 -.05 -.11 .03 -.08 Father PT .21 .21 .05 -.28 .14 -.15 .18 .03 EC .08 .12 .17 .01 -.19 -.00 .13 .19 PD -.32 -.06 -.01 .06 -.357* -.12 -.16 .26 ToM .02 .15 .16 -.05 -.05 .13 -.08 .03
Infants’ Intra-Personal Emotional Communication, Parents’ Dispositional Empathy and ToM
As table 4 shows, bivariate correlation analyses were used to determine the relation between infants’ intra-personal emotional communication and parents’ dispositional empathy and ToM abilities. In total, three significant correlations were found. First, a positive
correlation between mothers’ ToM score and the duration of infants’ gaze on the mother while showing a simple smile, rs (46) = 0.304, p= .040. Second, another positive correlation
between mothers’ ToM score and the duration of infants’ gaze on the mother while showing a Duplay smile, rs (46) = 0.323, p= .028 was found. Third, a negative correlation between
fathers’ Personal Distress score and the duration of infants’ gaze on the father while showing a simple smile, rs (32) = -0.357, p= .045 became clear. The other variables concerning
parents’ dispositions and infants’ intra-personal synchrony did not show any significances. Hence, regression analyses were solely run for the above-mentioned variables.
Simple regression analysis was used to predict the duration of infants’ gaze on the mother while showing a simple smile based on mothers’ ToM score, B = 0.008, t(44) =1.924,
p = .061. No significant regression equation was found which means that mothers’ ToM score
did not significantly account for the variance of the duration of infants’ gaze on the mother while showing a simple smile. Furthermore, another simple regression analysis was used to predict the duration of infants’ gaze on the father while showing a simple smile based on fathers’ Personal Distress score, B = -0.007, t(30) =-1.937, p = .062. Similar to results regarding to the mother, no significant regression equation was found for predicting the duration of infants’ gaze on the father while showing a simple smile by fathers’ Personal Distress score. Finally, to predict the duration of infants’ gaze on the mother while showing a Duplay smile by mothers’ ToM score, B = 0.003, t(44) =2.118, p = .040, another simple regression analysis was used. Here, a significant regression equation was found, F(1, 44) =
4.487, p = .040, with an R2 of 0.093. Thus, an increase of mothers’ ToM score by 1 point,
increased the duration of infants’ gaze on the mother while smiling with a high intensity by 0.28%.
Discussion
The aim of the present study was to investigate to what extent infants’ emotional communication is associated with parents’ emotional communication (first research question), and what role parents’ dispositional empathy and ToM abilities play for both parents’ (second research question) and infants’ emotional communication (third research question). The most striking finding is that the impact of parents’ emotional communicative abilities was highly dependent on the different intensity of their smile. Whereas for smiling with a moderate intensity no significant results were found, for smiling with either low or high intensity, several significances became clear. Consistent with Messinger and colleagues (2001), results of the present study provide evidence for the different smiles to have a different meaning. Furthermore, mothers’ ToM abilities had a strikingly significant impact on their own and their children’s emotional communicative abilities. Interestingly, empathy abilities barely played a role for infants’ and parents’ emotional communication.
Concerning the first research question, results were mixed. On the one hand,
hypothesis supporting relations were found. In fact, longer durations of mothers’ and fathers’ gaze on the child while smiling with a high intensity, significantly increased the duration of infants’ gaze on the mother while showing a simple smile and decreased the duration of infants’ gaze off the father. At the same time, fathers who gazed longer on the child while smiling with a low intensity had children who gazed longer on their father while showing a play/Duchenne smile. These findings partly provide evidence for the existence of a relation between infants’ and their parents’ emotional communication abilities. On the other hand, results revealed inconsistencies with the hypothesis. Namely, mothers who gazed longer on
the child while smiling with low intensity had children who gazed shorter on their mother while showing a play/Duchenne smile.
With respect to the second and third research question, findings concerning parents’ empathy abilities were not significant, except for a relation between one of fathers’ emotional communicative behaviors and their Empathic Concern scores. The insignificant findings for parents’ empathy in relation to their own and infants’ emotional communication could be explained by the fact, that for the purpose of this study, the co-occurrence of solely positive facial expressions while gazing towards the interaction partner were measured. Alternatively, also including infants’ negative expressions for measuring emotional communicative abilities and assess them in relation to their parents’ empathy would have been conceivable and might have changed the results. However, the only significant finding, namely that fathers with higher EC scores gazed shorter on their child while showing a highly intensive smile is
contradictory to my hypothesis. This could be explained by different aspects. First, it might be the case that fathers who have higher EC abilities, which means they have more affective reactions of sympathy and concern for fellow people (De Corte et al., 2007), generally tend to be more serious/less playful with their children, because especially their tendency to feel concerned about other people is more expressed than to feel sympathy for others. Second, it could be the case that those fathers’ with higher EC scores, randomly had children with lower durations of positive facial expressions and hence, lower positive reactions to their children were expectable. For the purpose of this study, no analyses controlling for these factors were carried out and thus, more research is needed to gain a more in-depth insight.
Regarding to parents’ ToM abilities, results showed that mothers’ ToM abilities are significantly related to their own and their infants’ emotional communication abilities. On the one hand, mothers with higher ToM scores gazed longer on their child while smiling highly intensive. On the other hand, those mothers with higher ToM scores also had infants who
gazed longer on mother while showing a Duplay smile. Both findings are in accordance with the predictions. Interestingly, no significant linkage was found for fathers’ ToM scores and any of their own or their infants’ behaviors of intra-personal emotional communication. Explanations could be that either, mothers’ abilities to understand other people’s minds, their intentions and views (Peterson & Slaughter, 2009) seem to be more important to their own and infants’ communicative skills than those abilities of fathers. Alternatively, those different patterns of results for mothers and fathers could occur due to other influencing aspects, for instance, parents’ different socio-demographics (e.g. age of the parent, SES, number of siblings, etc.). For the purpose of this study, this was not investigated. In order to control for this, further analyses with including control variables would be necessary.
However, the findings concerning mothers support the hypothesized link between parents’ ToM abilities and one of the measured emotional communicative behaviors, at least for mothers. Moreover, it is consistent with related previous research, where connections between social-communicative aspects of children and their later ToM abilities were already revealed (Charman et al., 2000; Olineck & Poulin-Dubois, 2005; Wellman, et al., 2004). Hence, the present study expands the knowledge to the extent that communicative skills and ToM abilities are not only related in childhood, but also in female adulthood.
Limitations and Future Suggestions
After delineating some of the present study’s limitations, future research directions will be suggested. First, it is important to keep in mind that the families who participated in the current study, came from a relatively highly educated background. Thus, the findings have limited generalizability to a low- or middle-educated population.
In addition, all the dyadic observations differed in quality, which means for example that some observations had more-, while some had fewer distractions for parents and infants. Also, practical issues like lighting conditions differed from observation to observation.
During some dyadic interactions, more unforeseen incidents (e.g. pets or siblings entering the room where the observation took place, technical problems with the camera, lighting
problems, etc.) occurred and during others, fewer difficulties occurred. Hence, the different durations of infants’ and parents’ emotional communicative behavior (e.g. gazing off the interaction partner) could be due to those circumstances, instead of due to differences in the actual emotional communication abilities of the participants. For future research, it would be optimal to structure observations in a more controlled way by for instance putting more effort in avoiding interruptions and creating a more similar setting for all the observations.
Second, the fact that the micro-coding process was carried out by people instead of using new coding technologies (e.g. computer software’s that automatically measure emotional communicative behaviors) displays a limitation of the current study. As a result, differences in the way of coding or in the coding quality (due to the possibility of human failure) could occur. In future research, those above mentioned modern coding technologies should rather be used than coding by manually.
Finally, since the present study investigated the relation between parents’ and infants’ intra-personal (instead of inter-personal) synchrony of emotional communication, and
parents’ dispositional empathy and ToM, for future research it would be interesting to
additionally take the parents’ and infants’ inter-personal synchrony into account. As we know from Beebe and colleagues (2016), inter- and intra-personal synchrony of emotional
communication is a result of a dynamic interaction between the interaction partners and both aspects should be seen as a part of the same system (Beebe et al., 2016). Hence, investigating both intra- and inter- personal synchrony, and assessing the relation of those behaviors with parents’ dispositional self-reported empathy and ToM abilities would be very interesting. Additionally, future research should also determine the role of the infants’ empathy and ToM
abilities (in addition to the present study, where parents’ empathy and ToM abilities were investigated) for their own and parents’ emotional communicative abilities.
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