Background: Assessment of mother-child interactions is a core issue of early child development and psychopathology. This paper focuses on the concept of “synchrony” and examines (1) how synchrony in mother-child interaction is defined and operationalized; (2) the contribution that the concept of synchrony has brought to understanding the nature of mother-child interactions.
Method: Between 1977 and 2013, we searched several databases using the following key-words: « synchrony » « interaction » and « mother-child ». We focused on studies examining parent-child interactions among children aged 2 months to 5 years. From the 63 relevant studies, we extracted study description variables (authors, year, design, number of subjects, age); assessment conditions and modalities; and main findings.
Results: The most common terms referring to synchrony were mutuality, reciprocity, rhythmicity, harmonious interaction, turn-taking and shared affect; all terms were used to characterize the mother-child dyad. As a consequence, we propose defining synchrony as a dynamic and reciprocal adaptation of the temporal structure of behaviors and shared affect between interactive partners. Three main types of assessment methods for studying synchrony emerged: (1) global interaction scales with dyadic items; (2) specific synchrony scales; and (3) micro-coded time-series analyses. It appears that synchrony should be regarded as a social signal per se as it has been shown to be valid in both normal and pathological populations. Better mother-child synchrony is associated with familiarity (vs. unknown partner), a healthy mother (vs. pathological mother), typical development (vs. psychopathological development), and a more positive child outcomes.
Discussion: Synchrony is a key feature of mother-infant interactions. Adopting an objective approach in studying synchrony is not a simple task given available assessment tools and due to its temporality and multimodal expression. We propose an integrative approach combining clinical observation and engineering techniques to improve the quality of synchrony analysis.

/pdf/why-synchrony-matters-during-mother-child-interactions-a-1opgwx2dyn.pdf

Why synchrony matters during mother-child interactions: a systematic review.

Various aspects of motherese also known as infant-directed speech (IDS) have been studied for many years. As it is a widespread phenomenon, it is suspected to play some important roles in infant development. Therefore, our purpose was to provide an update of the evidence accumulated by reviewing all of the empirical or experimental studies that have been published since 1966 on IDS driving factors and impacts. Two databases were screened and 144 relevant studies were retained. General linguistic and prosodic characteristics of IDS were found in a variety of languages, and IDS was not restricted to mothers. IDS varied with factors associated with the caregiver (e.g., cultural, psychological and physiological) and the infant (e.g., reactivity and interactive feedback). IDS promoted infants’ affect, attention and language learning. Cognitive aspects of IDS have been widely studied whereas affective ones still need to be developed. However, during interactions, the following two observations were notable: (1) IDS prosody reflects emotional charges and meets infants’ preferences, and (2) mother-infant contingency and synchrony are crucial for IDS production and prolongation. Thus, IDS is part of an interactive loop that may play an important role in infants’ cognitive and social development.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0078103&type=printable

Motherese in Interaction: At the Cross-Road of Emotion and Cognition? (A Systematic Review)

We review evidence that autistic spectrum disorders have their origin in early, prenatal failure of development in systems that program timing, serial coordination and prospective control of movements and that regulate affective evaluations of experiences. There are effects in early infancy, before medical diagnosis, especially in motor sequencing, selective or exploratory attention, affective expression and intersubjective engagement with parents. These are followed by retardation of cognitive development and language learning in the second or third year, which lead to a diagnosis of ASD. The early signs relate to abnormalities that have been found in brain stem systems and cerebellum in the embryo or early foetal stage, before the cerebral neocortex is functional, and they have clear consequences in infancy when neocortical systems are intensively elaborated. We propose, with evidence of the disturbances of posture, locomotion and prospective motor control in children with autism, as well as facial expression of interest and affect, and attention to other persons’ expressions, that examination of the psychobiology of motor affective disorders, rather than later developing cognitive or linguistic ones, may facilitate early diagnosis. Research in this area may also explain how intense interaction, imitation or ‘expressive art’ therapies, which respond intimately with motor activities, are effective at later stages. Exceptional talents of some autistic people may be acquired compensations for basic problems with expectant self-regulations of movement, attention and emotion.

/pdf/autism-as-a-developmental-disorder-in-intentional-movement-4egr5hzfmr.pdf

Autism as a developmental disorder in intentional movement and affective engagement

http://speapsl.aphp.fr/pdfpublications/2010/2010-3.pdf

What studies of family home movies can teach us about autistic infants: A literature review

Background 
To assess whether taking into account interaction synchrony would help to better differentiate autism (AD) from intellectual disability (ID) and typical development (TD) in family home movies of infants aged less than 18 months, we used computational methods.


Methodology and Principal Findings 
First, we analyzed interactive sequences extracted from home movies of children with AD (N = 15), ID (N = 12), or TD (N = 15) through the Infant and Caregiver Behavior Scale (ICBS). Second, discrete behaviors between baby (BB) and Care Giver (CG) co-occurring in less than 3 seconds were selected as single interactive patterns (or dyadic events) for analysis of the two directions of interaction (CG→BB and BB→CG) by group and semester. To do so, we used a Markov assumption, a Generalized Linear Mixed Model, and non negative matrix factorization. Compared to TD children, BBs with AD exhibit a growing deviant development of interactive patterns whereas those with ID rather show an initial delay of development. Parents of AD and ID do not differ very much from parents of TD when responding to their child. However, when initiating interaction, parents use more touching and regulation up behaviors as early as the first semester.


Conclusion 
When studying interactive patterns, deviant autistic behaviors appear before 18 months. Parents seem to feel the lack of interactive initiative and responsiveness of their babies and try to increasingly supply soliciting behaviors. Thus we stress that credence should be given to parents' intuition as they recognize, long before diagnosis, the pathological process through the interactive pattern with their child.

/pdf/do-parents-recognize-autistic-deviant-behavior-long-before-2ps9zadm5c.pdf

Do parents recognize autistic deviant behavior long before diagnosis? Taking into account interaction using computational methods.

Autism is a well-defined clinical syndrome after the second year of life, but information on autism in the first two years of life is still lacking. The study of home videos has described children with autism during the first year of life as not displaying the rigid pattern typical of later symptoms. Therefore, developmental/environmental factors are claimed in addition to genetic/biological ones to explain the onset of autism during maturation. Here we describe (1) a developmental hypothesis focusing on the possible implication of motherese impoverishment during the course of parent-infant interactions as a possible co-factor; (2) the methodological approach we used to develop a computerized algorithm to detect motherese in home videos; (3) the best configuration performance of the detector in extracting motherese from home video sequences (accuracy = 82% on speaker-independent versus 87.5% on speaker-dependent) that we should use to test this hypothesis.

/pdf/computerized-home-video-detection-for-motherese-may-help-to-4uvd3ugnn8.pdf

Computerized home video detection for motherese may help to study impaired interaction between infants who become autistic and their parents

Nous allons présenter une étude sur la voix, dérivée de notre recherche sur les signes précoces d’autisme. Nous savons que, dès la naissance, le bébé montre un intérêt pour certains éléments de la voix de sa mère (cf. nombreux travaux de Trevarthen et Fernald). Ces recherches peuvent être croisées avec les hypothèses avancées par J. Lacan à propos de la «pulsion invoquante ». En effet, Lacan a rajouté le regard et la voix à la liste des objets pulsionnels décrits par Freud : sein, pénis, fécès. Notre intérêt pour ce sujet nous est venu en remarquant des phénomènes étranges dans des films familiaux de bébés devenus plus tard autistes. Ces bébés qui, dans les activités quotidiennes de change, de bain, de nourrissage, ne regardaient pas le parent qui s’occupait d’eux, pouvaient, tout d’un coup, non seulement regarder, mais se mettre même à répondre en rentrant dans une véritable « protoconversation ».

Erika Parlato

Papers

Computerized home video detection for motherese may help to study impaired interaction between infants who become autistic and their parents

Les interactions sonores entre les bébés devenus autistes et leurs parents