Expression of negative affect during face-to-face interaction: A double video study of young infants' sensitivity to social contingency

The purpose was to assess infants' sensitivity to social contingency, taking affective state into account, during face-to-face interaction with the mother in a double video set-up. Infants' behaviour during three sequences of live face-to-face interaction were compared to two sequences where the interaction between the infant and the mother was set out of phase, by presenting either the infant or the mother with a replay of their partners' behaviour during earlier live interaction. We found a significant negative correlation between the infant's degree of negative affect and the average time of looking at the mother during the live sequences. A median split was calculated to separate the infants into a high-negative-affect group and a low-negative-affect group on the basis of their emotional responses during the experiment. The low-negative-affect infants looked significantly more at their mothers than other foci during the live but not the replay sequences, while the high-negative-affect infants did not show this difference. The results suggest that 2-4-month old infants are able to distinguish between experimental distortion of contingent aspects in live and replay sequences, but that this effect of the replay condition may not be shown by moderate to highly distressed infants. Our findings underline the importance of taking infants' emotional state into account in experiments intended to assess their capacity for intersubjective communication. Copyright (c) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.