CIPsi, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal.
Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Rockville, United States.
Infant Behav Dev. 2020 May;59:101438. doi: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2020.101438. Epub 2020 Apr 6.
Multiple studies have demonstrated the critical role of touch in human development and the impact of mother's tactile input for an infant's well-being. However, the literature lacks a detailed description of maternal touch behavior during play tasks. Our study examined maternal touch patterns during mother-infant interactions. We analyzed the touch behavior of 41 mothers while they interacted with their 12-month-old infants, in a structured social interaction, composed of three tasks: (1) free play with toys, (2) free play without toys, and (3) object play with a challenging toy. Every touch performed by the mother was segmented and categorized using the Ordinalized Mother Touch Scale (OMTS Category). In a 3 (Play Task) x 8 (OMTS Category) ANOVA, all effects were significant. We found that, in the free play without toys task, mother's use of touch is highly frequent (M = 71 %), when compared to object-oriented tasks. Mothers also adjusted to object-oriented task difficulty: they touched almost twice as much in the challenging play task as in the free play with toys (M = 26 % vs. M = 14 %). In addition, the different play tasks influenced the proportion of time mothers used particular categories of touch. In summary, our study found that mothers' touch behavior depends on the play task demands (non-object oriented vs. object oriented) changing in terms of frequency but also in the mother's use of different categories of touch.
多项研究表明，触摸在人类发展中起着至关重要的作用，母亲的触觉输入对婴儿的健康成长有着重要影响。然而，目前的文献缺乏对母亲在游戏任务中触摸行为的详细描述。本研究旨在探讨母亲在与婴儿互动时的触摸模式。我们分析了 41 位母亲在与 12 个月大的婴儿进行结构化社会互动时的触摸行为，该互动由三个任务组成：（1）自由玩玩具，（2）无玩具自由玩，（3）用挑战性玩具玩。母亲对婴儿进行的每一次触摸都使用Ordinalized Mother Touch Scale（OMTS Category）进行分段和分类。在 3（游戏任务）x 8（OMTS Category）的 ANOVA 中，所有效应均具有统计学意义。我们发现，在无玩具自由游戏任务中，母亲的触摸频率非常高（M=71%），与面向物体的任务相比。母亲也会根据面向物体的任务难度进行调整：在挑战性游戏任务中，她们的触摸次数几乎是在自由玩玩具任务中的两倍（M=26% vs. M=14%）。此外，不同的游戏任务也会影响母亲使用特定触摸类别的时间比例。总之，我们的研究发现，母亲的触摸行为取决于游戏任务的要求（非物体导向与物体导向），触摸的频率和母亲使用的触摸类别都会发生变化。
