Dyadic co-regulation, affective intensity and maternal communicative style at 12 months: a comparison among extremely preterm and full-term dyads.

Previous research has found that mother–preterm infant face-to-face interactions in the first months of life are less synchronous and preterm infants express less positive emotions than full-terms (Feldman and Eidelman, 2007; Bozzette, 2007). However, little is known about the quality of dyadic processes and its relationships with affective intensity and communicative style in mother-infant preterm dyads at the end of the first year when infants are building language through interactions. For this reason, our thinking was framed with reference to Fogel’s (2003) model of interaction as a continuous adjustment between partners. Our study aimed at investigating the quality of mother–infant co-regulation in preterm compared to full-term infant–mother dyads at 12 months, taking into account affective intensity of both partners and mothers’ communicative style. Method. Twenty-seven monolingual Italian mother–infant dyads, including 16 extremely low gestational age preterms (mean GA: 25.7 weeks) without major cerebral damage, and 11 full-terms comparable for gender and socio-economical background, were videotaped at 12-month-old (corrected age for preterms) during a spontaneous play interaction. Quality and degree of dyadic co-regulation (Fogel et al., 2003), mothers’ and infants’ affective intensity (Lunkenheimer et al., 2011) and maternal communicative style (Longobardi, 1992) were coded. Results. Unilateral-following co-regulation prevailed in both samples with mothers observing their infant playing, followed by unilateral-initiating by mothers in preterm dyads, while sequential-symmetrical in full-term dyads. Neutral and low negative affective intensity prevailed significantly in preterms, while low positive in full terms. Preterms’ mothers showed similarly to their infants significantly higher neutral affective intensity. Maternal communicative style’s analyses will allow to further understand the characteristics of communicative exchanges in the two groups. Conclusions. Search for co-regulation was observed in both samples at 12 months, but with less symmetric and positive engagement in preterm with respect to full term dyads. The implications of these findings for communication and language development in preterm dyads will be discussed.