SYNOPSIS

Objective. Mothers’ affective responses to infant laughing are essential in parent-child interaction. This experimental study examined whether instructing mothers to employ emotion regulation strategies can change their self-reported, physiological, and facial expressive responses to infant laughing. Design. Using a within-subjects design, mothers (N = 100, age M = 30.87 years) were exposed to infant laughing sounds while receiving enhancement, suppression, and no emotion regulation instructions. Positive affect, perception of laughing, intended sensitive and insensitive caregiving responses, skin conductance level, and facial expressions in response to infant laughing were measured. Results. Enhancement resulted in increased positive affect, a more positive perception of the laugh, more intended sensitive caregiving responses, and, compared to suppression, fewer intended insensitive caregiving responses. Moreover, enhancement resulted in lower sad and, compared to suppression, higher happy facial expressi-vity. In contrast, suppression resulted in a less positive perception. Enhancement did not affect skin conductance level. Conclusions. Enhancement can have beneficial effects on mothers’ self-reported and facial expressive responses to infant laughing in an experimental setting. Enhancement instructions may be used to increase mothers’ positive feelings in response to infant laughing and to promote sensitive caregiving behaviors and positive facial expressions, which may benefit affective mother-child interchanges.

概要

目的。 母亲对婴儿笑的情感反应在亲子互动中至关重要。这项实验研究检验了指示母亲采取情绪调节策略是否可以改变他们对婴儿笑声的自我报告，生理和面部表情反应。设计。采用受试者内部设计，母亲（ N = 100，年龄M = 30.87岁）在接受增强，抑制和没有情绪调节指令的情况下暴露于婴儿笑声中。测量了对婴儿笑的积极影响，笑的感知，预期的敏感和不敏感的照料反应，皮肤电导水平和面部表情。结果。 增强导致积极影响增加，对笑的认识更积极，预期的敏感护理反应更多，与抑制相比，预期的不敏感护理反应更少。此外，增强功能可以降低悲伤感，与抑制相比，可以提高面部表情的愉悦度。相反，压制导致不太积极的感知。增强并不影响皮肤电导水平。结论。 在实验环境中，增强对母亲的自我报告和面部表情对婴儿笑声的反应具有有益作用。增强说明可用于增加母亲对婴儿笑声的积极感觉，并促进敏感的照料行为和积极的面部表情，这可能有益于情感母子交流。