The responses to sad and happy infant faces are negatively associated with Maternal Emotional Availability

Nasti, Carla and La Resta, Sonia and Paternoster, Stefania and Perzolli, Silvia and De Falco, Simona and Senese, Vincenzo Paolo (2025) The responses to sad and happy infant faces are negatively associated with Maternal Emotional Availability. INFOCOMMUNICATIONS JOURNAL, 17 (Spec). pp. 9-15. ISSN 2061-2079

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Abstract

The pervasive presence of technology, including digital devices, intelligent networks, and online platforms, has given rise to new forms of human interaction. Therefore, it becomes crucial to understand how technological development influences profound aspects of human relationships, such as communication and the formation of social bonds, and consequently how it can positively integrate into human interactions while preserving fundamental elements such as emotional components and empathy. In this context, it is important to carefully examine the caregiverchild relationship. Several studies on the quality of this relationship have emphasized that it may depend on adult responses to salient infant cues considered at different processing levels. However, there are few studies that have investigated the predictive validity of the association between responses to infant cues and the quality of real caregiving behaviours. The aim of this study was to explore the association between responses to different infant cues, evaluated at different levels, and the quality of the caregiverchild relationship, measured in terms of emotional availability. 25 mother-child dyads participated in the study. Preliminarily mothers (27-50 years) were administered two implicit and two explicit measures (SC-IATs and Semantic Differentials) adapted to assess their responses to sad and happy infant faces and then, after a week, they were observed interacting with their child (aged 20-68 months) during 10 minutes of free play. The results confirmed a low consistency between responses to different stimuli and showed that implicit responses to sad (not happy) infant faces were positively associated with greater emotional availability, r=.37, p<.05. This study confirms the importance of considering both the emotional valence of infant stimuli and the processing level to assess in a valid way adult caregiving propensity.

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