Infant response to the still-face situation at 3 and 6 months

Abstract

To investigate developmental changes in infant responses to the mother's still face (SF), we ob-served 37 mother-infant dyads in the laboratory when infants were 3 and 6 months old. Infantsreduced their smiling and increased their gazing away from mother during the SF at both 3 and 6months. Compared with 3-month-olds, 6-month-olds were more likely to use directed hand activi-ties while gazing away from mother. Results suggest that developmental changes in gaze and motoractivity are incorporated into the infant's response to a stressful situation.The still-face situation, in which mothers freeze their faceand stop talking to their infants, has been used by a number ofinvestigators to study the effect of alterations in maternal emo-tional expressions on infant behavior (Cohn & Elmore, 1988;Field, Vega-Lahr, Scafidi, & Goldstein, 1986; Fogel, Diamond,Langhorst, & Demos, 1982; Gusella, Muir, & Tronick, 1988;Mayes & Carter, 1990; Murray & Trevarthen, 1985; Stack M Stoller & Field, 1982; Tronick, Als, Adamson,Wise, & Brazelton, 1978). A consistent finding across thesestudies is that when mothers pose the still-face expression fol-lowing a baseline period of spontaneous face-to-face interac-tion, 3-month-old infants show an increase of gazing away fromthe mother's face, changes in heart rate indicating increasedarousal, and a decrease of smiling. Relatively few infants fuss orcry if the still face lasts no more than 2 or 3 min, althoughcrying has been observed during a resumed normal interactioncondition following the still-face condition (Fogel et al., 1982).These results suggest that a short-term maternal still face has asobering or mildly stressful effect on young infants.The still-face effect has been shown to be caused by the ces-sation of maternal movement and expressiveness in the contextof prior continuous maternal activity. The response to the stillface is clearly different from other types of interruption of in-teraction, such as when the mother turns her head to talk to theexperimenter (Murray & Trevarthen, 1985), or from the motherleaving the room (Field etal., 1986; Fogel, 1980). Using a video-taped image of the mother, Gusella et al. (1988) presented in-fants with the following conditions: a still face plus interactivevoice of the mother, a no-voice interactive face, and a no-voicestill face. The still face, with or without the voice, had the sameeffect as in the live still-face situation, whereas the interactiveface without the voice did not produce a typical still-face effect.Finally, Gusella et al. (1988) compared infants who experienceda normal/still face/normal sequence of conditions with infantswho experienced a-normal/normal/normal sequence. The in-Sueko Toda, Department of Psychology, Shirayuri College, Tokyo,Japan; Alan Fogel, Department of Psychology, University of Utah.We thank P. W Berman and M. H. Bornstein for comments.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed toSueko Toda, Shirayuri College, 5-7-48-202, Oshitate-cho, Fuchu-shi,Tokyo 183, Japan, or to Alan Fogel, Department of Psychology, Univer-sity of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112.fants who experienced the still face behaved significantly dif-ferently in th e secon d an thir conditions of sequenccompared with infants who had three normal interactions in arow. The still-face effect, therefore, is not due to maternal si-lence, to the order of presentation, or to elapsed time.The study by Gusella et al. (1988) is one of the few to reportinfants' responses to the still face at any age other than 3months. Their study compared infants at 3 and 6 months. At 6months, they found identical effects for differences betweennormal and still-face conditions in the duration of gazing andsmiling that have been described for the 3-month-olds. Themain age difference was that 6-month-olds gazed away longerduring the still face than 3-month-olds, but this could be ex-plained by the normative increase reported for gaze away frommother at 6 months compared with at 3 months during thenormal spontaneous interaction (Cohn & Tronick, 1987; Kaye& Fogel, 1980).For 3-month-olds, gaze aversion from social interaction hasbeen explained as a mechanism for reducing arousal or tensionand for processing stimulation received from the social partner(Brazelton, Koslowski, & Main, 1974; Sroufe & Waters, 1977;Stern, 1977). Field (1981) found that gazing away from themother is a common strategy used to modulate arousal and toprocess information about distressing events or situations, asshown by a relation between heart rate changes and gaze aver-sion. By 6 months, gaze aversion may be related more to aredirection of infant attention, away from mother and towardphysical objects (Kaye & Fogel, 1980). Infants develop an inter-est in watching their hands and body or the external worldaround this period (Piaget, 1954), which is a period that alsocorresponds to increased use of the hands for reaching andgrasping (von Hofsten, 1979; White, Castle, & Held, 1964).D