Within our lives there are things that we experience that can either be seen as risk factors or protective factors.
When a mother and her baby are first developing their relationship, they will live through a number of experiences which are often referred to as risk and protective factors. These factors may be things that happen within the home, or within their wider environment. We often call environmental factors such as these “social determinants of health” and they are likely to affect all of us to a certain degree.
We know that there are many experiences that a mother and her child will live through whilst developing their relationship, but this study was particularly interested in what might influence (both positively and negatively) the development of dyadic synchrony. To do that, I carried out a study called a Systematic Review. A systematic review is a useful way of collecting up all of the experiments that have already been done on this topic, and then reviewing the data to see the similarities and differences between all of the results. A systematic review allows us to see patterns in the data, and it also allows us to see what might still be missing from our knowledge so that we can concentrate in that area to find out more answers.
For this systematic review, I searched a number of academic databases using the terms “mother AND infant AND synchrony”
Any published papers that included experiments with infants aged between 3-9 months old, with their mother, that specified a certain risk or protective factor, and that measured dyadic behavioural synchrony were included in the review. Twenty eight papers were included in the final review. For each paper, I looked at what the researchers were measuring, how they measured it, and what their final results were. Many of the researchers were interested in different types of environmental factors, ranging from maternal mental health, infant physical health, genetics, and demographics (such as maternal age or income level), as well as other factors. It is important in this instance to try and work out how any of these results might fit together. To make that a little bit easier I created this summary of the results:
Of course, this list is not all of the factors that might influence how mother-infant synchrony develops, it is just a list of influences that researchers have so far discovered. The list will continue to grow and change as we discover more about relationships and how they develop.
It is also important to remember that even if a mother or infant is living with any of these environmental factors, they are likely to have a large number of other protective factors that may act to counter balance any potential risks. Experiencing any of these does not necessarily mean that dyadic synchrony will not develop, just as having none of these doesn’t mean that it definitely will. While external factors can influence the ways in which we develop, an influence is by no means a certainty.
However, in knowing this information, I was able to move forward and think about how these factors within the mother and infants’ lives might further be influenced by smartphone use in the home.
**If anything in this blog post has affected you, contact your GP or take a look at the support and resources page for organisations that may be able to help**
