What is it about?
The coordination of mothers' and their infants' positive affect (known as mother-infant positive affect synchrony) is thought to support infants' emerging social and emotional competencies. However, it is not possible for mothers and their infants to be synchronized all the time; one of the key tasks of parenting early on is repairing ruptures in positive affect synchrony. We sought to examine changes in mother-infant affect synchrony following an experimentally-induced rupture in synchrony, and whether these changes in synchrony facilitated infant emotion regulation.
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Why is it important?
Following experimentally-induced ruptures in positive affect synchrony, there was a shift in the coordinated "dance" between mothers and their infants, such that infants become more attuned to maternal signals. Surprisingly, this "repair" of synchrony was not associated with infant emotion regulation. Dyadic processes may be optimal when they are flexible, suggesting a tipping point between infants' coordination and hypervigiliance to maternal signals.
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This page is a summary of: Affect synchrony and emotion coregulation are separable processes: Evaluation of relational stress and mother–infant synchrony., Journal of Family Psychology, March 2025, American Psychological Association (APA),
DOI: 10.1037/fam0001310.
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