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E Z Tronick

Publications and source records attributed to E Z Tronick.

35 records · Page 2Linked to original sources
PubMed1994

Beyond the face: an empirical study of infant affective configurations of facial, vocal, gestural, and regulatory behaviors.

This article evaluates the extent to which infants' expressive modalities of face, gaze, voice, gesture, and posture form coherent affective configurations and whether these configurations are related to specific interactive contexts. 50 6-month-old infants and their mothers were videotaped in Tronick's Face-to-Face Still-Face Paradigm. The infants' gaze, voice, gestures, self-regulatory, and withdrawal behaviors were coded with the Infant Regulatory Scoring System (IRSS). The infants' facial expressions were coded with Izard's AFFEX system. Contingency analyses of IRSS behaviors and AFFEX expressions revealed 4 distinct affective configurations: Social Engagement, Object Engagement, Passive Withdrawal, and Active Protest. These affective configurations were differentially distributed among the different interactive contexts of the Face-to-Face Still-Face Paradigm. It is suggested that behaviors and facial expressions are fundamental expressive units flexibly organized into configurations that convey messages about the infant's internal state and intentions. Furthermore, it is hypothesized that the basic units of the infant's experience are these distinct affective configurations of emotion and behavior.

Affect↗
PubMed1994

The Quechua manta pouch: a caretaking practice for buffering the Peruvian infant against the multiple stressors of high altitude.

The manta pouch--a caretaking practice of tightly swaddling and enclosing the infant in a set of cloths and blankets--and other caretaking practices are described for high-altitude resident (> 4,000 m) Quechua mother-infant pairs (N = 14). The manta pouch modifies the microenvironment inside the pouch so that, compared to the ambient environment, the temperature is higher and more stable, the humidity is higher, the partial pressure of O2 is lower, and stimulation levels are reduced. As the infant gets older, the characteristics of the pouch are modified such that the infant is increasingly exposed to ambient conditions. These caretaking practices may benefit the infant by buffering the infant from the multiple ecological stressors of high altitude, but they may also incur costs by exposing the infant to additional microenvironmental stressors (e.g., higher CO2 levels) and by reducing stimulation and limiting infant movement.

Adaptation, Physiological↗
PubMed1992

The neurobehavioral organization of Efe (pygmy) infants.

The neurobehavioral organization of 16 Efe Mbuti (pygmy) infants was examined over the first weeks of life using the Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale. Mbuti infants are the smallest well-grown, full-term infants in the world, i.e., length and weight below the 10th percentile but ponderal index above the 50th percentile. The Efe infants are a relatively isolated population that allows for an evaluation of ethnic differences in newborn behavior; their small stature permits the examination of the relations among size, neurobehavioral organization, and morbid processes. The neurobehavioral organization of the Efe was compared with three groups of full-term infants: two full-statured, well-grown groups of infants, one African, one United States; and a group of symmetrically growth-retarded infants whose weight and length were proportionally compromised in utero. The behavioral organization of the Efe infants was found to be similar to the neurobehavior of the well-grown infants and superior to the group of growth-retarded infants. No unique neurobehavioral features were found compared with the other groups. These findings suggest that neurobehavioral organization has a universal form and that expected small size per se does not compromise infant behavior.

Birth Weight↗
PubMed1990

Protective apathy, a hypothesis about the behavioral organization and its relation to clinical and physiologic status of the preterm infant during the newborn period.

This article describes the behavioral organization and its change in relation to physiologic and clinical variables in a group of infants whose birthweight was less than 1.5 kg and who were experiencing and recovering from acute cardiorespiratory illness. The authors used the Brazelton Premature Sale, which was designed for use with a wide range of gestational ages (27 to 35 weeks). Examinations began 1 week after birth and were obtained serially during the initial recovery period of these infants.

Child Behavior↗
PubMed1989

Emotions and emotional communication in infants.

Important advances have recently been made in studying emotions in infants and the nature of emotional communication between infants and adults. Infant emotions and emotional communications are far more organized than previously thought. Infants display a variety of discrete affective expressions that are appropriate to the nature of events and their context. They also appreciate the emotional meaning of the affective displays of caretakers. The emotional expressions of the infant and the caretaker function to allow them to mutually regulate their interactions. Indeed, it appears that a major determinant of children's development is related to the operation of this communication system. Positive development may be associated with the experience of coordinated interactions characterized by frequent reparations of interactive errors and the transformation of negative affect into positive affect, whereas negative development appears to be associated with sustained periods of interactive failure and negative affect.

Communication↗
PubMed1989

Infant-mother face-to-face interaction: age and gender differences in coordination and the occurrence of miscoordination.

To evaluate the extent to which infants and mothers are able to coordinate their behavior, the interactions of 54 mother-infant pairs--18 each at 3, 6, and 9 months of age--were videotaped. Coordination was evaluated with 2 measures: (1) matching--the extent to which mother and infant engage in the same behavior at the same time; and (2) synchrony--the extent to which mother and infant change their behavior with respect to one another. Mother-infant pairs increase their degree of coordination with infant age, but the proportion of time they are coordinated is small. Mother-son pairs spend more time in coordinated states than mother-daughter pairs. The results suggest that interactions be characterized in terms of their movement from coordinated to miscoordinated states rather than only in terms of their degree of coordination. The gender differences are discussed in terms of their importance for the developmental differences in females and males.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1988

The effect of manipulating maternal behavior during an interaction on three- and six-month-olds' affect and attention.

3 studies were designed to examine the "still-face" paradigm, in which mothers stared at their 3- or 6-month-olds for a brief, still-face period interposed between 2 periods of normal face-to-face interaction. 6-month-olds decreased smiling and gazing at their mothers and grimaced more during the still-face period relative to the other periods; no period effects occurred in a no-change control group (Studies 1 and 2). Similar results were obtained when mothers and their infants observed and interacted with each other over closed-circuit color television monitors (Study 3). Moreover, the same relative decline in the infants' visual attention and positive affect during the still-face period occurred to a change in mothers' facial display (a televised, prerecorded, still face vs. a televised, live, interacting face) regardless of the presence or absence of their interactive voices (sound on the infants' monitor turned on or off). 3-month-olds exhibited a significant still-face effect, but only when maternal touch was a part of the manipulation (Study 1 vs. 2); therefore, the televised procedure was not conducted. The still-face effect is a robust phenomenon, produced with either "live" or "televised" procedures, both of which offer promising techniques for examining models of socioemotional perception/understanding of infants.

Affect↗
PubMed1987

The neonatal behavioral assessment scale as a biomarker of the effects of environmental agents on the newborn.

The organization of the newborn's brain and the nature of the effects of toxins and pollutants conspire to produce complex and difficult problems for the assessment of the behavioral effects of environmental agents. The newborn's brain can be characterized as relatively undifferentiated, and more vulnerable to, but potentially more capable of recovery from, the effects of environmental agents specific to this time period than it will be later in development. Environmental agents tend to have nonspecific, possibly subtle, effects that invade many areas of newborn functioning. These characteristics of the newborn and the behavioral effects of teratogens make assessment at this point in development difficult. Further exacerbating this difficulty is the nature of development. Development is critically dependent on the care the newborn receives. Distortions of a newborn's behavior can produce disturbances in the caretaking environment, and these caretaking disturbances can amplify the original behavioral distortion and produce other distortions. Attention to these types of effects must be built into an assessment. These considerations lead to the conclusion that an apical assessment of newborn behavior is required. The most standardized, valid, and reliable instrument currently available is the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale developed by Brazelton. It assesses the integrated actions of the infant that function to regulate simultaneously the infant's internal state and exchanges with the animate (caretaking) and inanimate environment. The scale uses a set of reflex and behavioral items to assess the critical domains of infant functioning (e.g., the infant's ability to control his states of consciousness).(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Child Behavior↗
PubMed1986

Temporal coordination of arm movements in early infancy: do infants move in synchrony with adult speech?

The purpose of the present study was to measure the degree of interdependence in timing (a) between infants' right and left arm movements, and (b) between movements of both arms and the onsets of stressed vowels in tape-recorded infant-appropriate speech. Based on previous work concerning closely related phenomena, we hypothesized that both forms of interdependence should be present to a high degree, even very early in infancy. Movements of 2 male and 4 female infants were analyzed at 2 and 10 weeks of age. Videotaping was conducted under 3 conditions: (a) quiet, (b) mother-infant interaction, and (c) presentation of a repeating tape loop containing natural sounding, infant-appropriate speech. Movement events were analyzed using a method of computer-aided 3-dimensional cinematography. A computer algorithm located change-in-direction movement events based on the 3-D coordinates. Lag sequential analysis was used to test for temporal interdependence. No evidence was found for interdependence between right and left arm movements, or between speech events and arm movements. The present findings have important implications for our understanding of early coordination and the regulation of mother-infant interaction. The utility of the movement-scoring methodology is also discussed in terms of its potential application to the study of early coordination development.

Female↗
PubMed1983

Three-month-old infants' reaction to simulated maternal depression.

To investigate the nature of the young infant's social competence, the effect of depressed maternal expression during face-to-face interaction was examined using an experimental analogue of maternal depression. Subjects were 12 female and 12 male infants, ages 96-110 days, and their mothers. 2 counter-balanced experimental treatments consisted of 3 min of normal maternal interaction and 3 min of stimulated depressed interaction. A control treatment consisted of 2 3-min epochs of normal maternal interaction. Interactions were videotaped and infant behavior described on a 5-sec time base that maintained order of occurrence. Infants in the depressed condition structured their behavior differently and were more negative than infants in the normal condition. Infants in the depressed condition produced higher proportions of protest, wary, and brief positive. Infants in the depressed condition cycled among protest, wary, and look away. Infants in the normal condition cycled among monitor, brief positive, and play. In addition, differences in negativity were likely to continue briefly after mothers switched from depressed to normal interaction. The data indicate that infants have a specific, appropriate, negative reaction to simulated depression in their mothers. These results question formulations based on alternate hypotheses and suggest that the infant has communicative intent in its interactions.

Child Behavior↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[The role of implicit knowledge in therapeutic change. Some implications of developmental observations for adult psychotherapy].

Several aspects of development change that are dependent on interactions between parent and infant are examined for their value in casting light on the process of change in adult psychotherapies. First, the domain of implicit knowledge (where changes necessarily occur in nonverbal infants) is identified. The vast majority of therapeutic change is found to occur in this domain. We then examine the improvised, largely unpredictable, nonlinear environments toward mutual goals that characterize the process of parent-infant and therapist-patient interactions. Finally, we provide a microdescription of these processes and provide a terminology for the "moments" that make up their flow. Of particular importance is the "moment of meeting", in which the participants interact in a way that created a new implicit, intersubjective understanding of their relationship and permits a new "way-of-being-with-the-other". We view "moments of meeting" as the key element in bringing about change in implicit knowledge, just as interpretations are thought to be the key element in bringing about change in explicit knowledge.

Humans↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The Touchpoints Pediatric Asthma Program.

The Brazelton Touchpoints Center at the Child Development Unit, Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, designed a program intended to change the way asthma is managed in medical offices across the United States. This program was recently implemented at five pediatric asthma practices in the Chicago area where asthma prevalence is alarmingly high.

Asthma↗