Author:

Abstract:

Stress affects our mental condition and behaviour. The way we respond to stress is influenced by the way our parents dealt with our distress when we were young. During a moment of infant distress, the vocal parental response can take different forms, based on arousal and valence. Arousal is the level of physiological activation and intensity associated with an emotional experience. Valence is the positive or negative nature of a vocalisation. The parental vocal soothing response lies on a spectrum between two opposite strategies: matching versus modelling, i.e. matching the infant’s negative emotions (high arousal and negative valence) versus modelling a well-regulated calm state (low arousal and positive valence). Here, we study infants and mothers in the home-setting, using wearable devices that record audio and measure the level of arousal through heart rate. We investigate which strategy parents tend to use and which one is the most effective to downregulate the infant’s arousal level during a moment of infant distress. We also examine how this relationship changes over development, from 5 to 10 to 15 months. We included 97 infants from 5, 10 and 15 months and their mothers. We hypothesise that parents tend to react to infant distress by modelling a calm state and that this is the most effective to downregulate the infant’s arousal at every age category studied, but older infants will be influenced more by the maternal voice. We will finish analysis before the conference to present the findings