Theme 1 Project 24
| Project
title |
Measuring Attunement in the Mother-Infant Dyad |
|
Researchers |
Jonathan
Delafield-Butt, Colwyn Trevarthen, and Professor Dave N Lee
(PMARC,
PESLS,
School of Education), University of Edinburgh, and NHS Lothian
University Hospitals |
|
Keywords |
Inter-subjectivity,
mother, infant, dyad, communicative, musicality |
|
Abstract |
This
project is investigating attunement in the mother-infant dyad. Musical
experience is at the origin of the special power of human thought
to create both imaginary futures of action and to solve
intricate practical problems in imaginative representation, with
support from memories of past action plans and their effects. Emotional
rhythms and expressive forms are essential components of satisfying
and supportive adult communicative interactions by speech and gesture
as they are for the preverbal communications of infants. This
grant provides seed-corn funding for research on a detailed micro-analysis
of the dynamic elements of intersubjective attunement using high
precision technologies. We measure rhythms and expressive forms of 'musical'
elements in the mother-infant dyad. We believe we can advance
the understanding of attunement, and clarify its role in the psychological
and neuropsychological development of babies as their brains and
bodies grow. We suggest that detection of developing psychopathology
early in life may be aided by using sensitive measures of interpersonal 'affect
attunement' that are able to gauge the degree of correspondence,
intimacy, and sharing-in-sympathy between the mother and the infant.
Work has begun to develop a computational platform and preliminary
analyses of attunement is being performed on multi-modal information, i.e. high
resolution motion data from limb gestures combined with acoustic
data from vocal expressions. These data are collected from a small
cohort of 'normal' and 'neurologically-at-risk' infants
when they are in communication with their mothers. This project
is 'piggy-backing' on an E.U. Commission project also underway to
monitor the communicative behaviour of newborn infants and to develop
novel diagnostics based on their movements and expression.
|
|
Publications |
.
|
|
Start
/end date |
June
2007 to June 2008 |
|
Funder
/amount |
International
Psychoanalytic Association, US$8,000
|
|
|
