Dyadic emotional regulation in mother and infant interaction and maternal attachment at nine months

36 mother/infant dyads at nine months, 20 of which had mothers with secure attachment models and 16 with insecure attachment models, examined using the Adult Attachment Interview, were video-recorded and coded with the Infant and Caregiver Engagement Phase (ICEP) coding system (Weinberg & Tronick, 1999) to which some changes were made, to evaluate their emotional regulation. The 36 mothers (mean age= 34,05 sd=3,41), were Italian, and their socio-economic level was medium. The infants, 12 girls and 24 boys, (mean age=9,31 sd=0,82) were full term and did not present any pathologies at birth. The aim of the study was to evaluate the relationship between the security of maternal attachment and the styles of mutual regulation engaged in by the dyads when the infant is nine months old. Matching is defined as the extent to which mothers and infants share joint negative, neutral, or positive states at the same moment in time; mismatching is defined as any non-shared dyadic state in which the two partners are not in the same state of engagement (Tronick et al., 2005). Significant differences emerged between the two groups in relation to coordinated and miscoordinated affective states. The secure mother dyads had a greater overall duration of affective matches with more positive matches than insecure mother dyads. The insecure mother dyads had a greater overall duration of affective mismatches than secure mother dyads; furthermore they spent more time in negative matches than the former, who almost never engaged negatively in their interaction. In this perspective the secure mother dyads appeared more able to share emotions, particularly positive emotions than insecure mother dyads. The latter appeared less able to regulate the negative emotions of their infants (more negative matches). In relation to the different types of mismatches the insecure mothers displayed proportionally more positive states when the infant displayed negative states and more negative states when the infant was neutral. In brief, this study highlights the existence of significant differences in the infant/mother dyads regulation modalities in relation to the different quality of the attachment model of the mothers, showing itself in the insecure mother dyads’ greater difficulty in mutual regulation and in the regulation of negative emotions.