A Multilevel Analysis of Different Infant Facial Expression Processing and Its Association with Observed Verbal Responsiveness

In the scientific literature, researchers interested in exploring the variables linked to the quality of the caregiver-child relationship have argued that it is related to the caregiver's responses to infant cues. However, few studies have investigated how infant cues with different valence are processed across different levels, and none has then correlated how these responses are related to the quality of the caregiver-child interaction. Therefore, this study aimed to examine how responses to different infant cues (happy and sad faces), assessed at various levels, are associated with the quality of the caregiver-child relationship, measured in terms of the caregiver's verbal responsiveness. To this aim, 25 mother–child dyads were involved. The mothers (27–48 years, M = 35.1, SD = 4.7) initially completed two SC-IATs and two semantic differentials to measure their implicit and explicit responses to the two kinds of infant faces respectively. Then, after a week, they were invited to spontaneously play with their child (20–68 months) using standardized games in their family environment. Results showed a weak congruence between the implicit and explicit responses; and that implicit responses to sad faces, r = .0.35, p < 0.05, but neither to happy faces nor both kinds of explicit responses, were significantly and positively associated to caregiver verbal responsiveness. This study provides further evidence of the significance of taking into account various levels of processing when assessing responses to infant cues and shows, for the first time, that the association between a caregiver's response to infant cues and actual behaviours depends on the characteristics of the stimulus and the level of processing considered. This suggests that implicit processing of sad infant cues may be a valid predictor of caregiving behaviours.