Exploring the interactive behaviours of sighted and visually impaired infants and their mothers: a still-face and eye-tracking study

Socio-emotional stress regulation is key to infants' development. Mothers’ ability of reading their infant’s emotional cues is key for development as it allows adequate and contingent responses to infant’s needs. Visually impaired infants tend to present partially unclear emotional cues; thus, their mothers may be challenged in responding contingently, when compared to mothers of typically developing infants. The present study had three aims: to investigate the interactive behaviour of infants with visual impairments compared to sighted controls; to assess the interactive behaviour of mothers of infants with visual impairments compared to sighted controls; to investigate the visual exploration of their own infants’ facial emotional expression by mothers of infants with visual impairments compared to sighted controls. Dyadic interactions between mothers and their own infants were video-recorded and coded. Clips selected from the video-recorded interactions were used to investigate maternal visual exploration. Results showed that visually impaired infants reacted similarly to socio-emotional stress. Mothers tended to use different strategies to regulate them when they are stressed, especially, mothers of sighted infants increased mind-oriented verbal comments and decreased the use of playful touch after the still-face phase, whereas mothers of visually impaired infants did not. Mothers tended to use the same strategy to explore their own infant’s emotional expression, looking more at the face and at the eyes in the upright condition, when it is easier to detect infant’s emotionality, while they look more at the body and at the mouth in the inverted condition, when it is more difficult to detect infant’s emotionality. These results will allow us to better understand how mothers of visually impaired infants read their infant’s emotional needs. This information could be used to better support VI children and their families.