Embodied intersubjective engagement in mother-infant tactile communication: a cross-cultural study of Japanese and Scottish mother-infant behaviors during infant pick-up

Abstract

This study examines the early development of cultural differences in a simple, embodied, and intersubjective engagement between mothers putting down, picking up, and carrying their infants between Japan and Scotland. Eleven Japanese and ten Scottish mothers with their 6- and then 9-month-old infants participated. Video and motion analyses were employed to measure motor patterns of the mothers' approach to their infants, as well as their infants' collaborative responses during put-down, pick-up, and carry phases. Japanese and Scottish mothers approached their infants with different styles and their infants responded differently to the short duration of separation during the trial. A greeting-like behavior of the arms and hands was prevalent in the Scottish mothers' approach, but not in the Japanese mothers' approach. Japanese mothers typically kneeled before making the final reach to pick-up their children, giving a closer, apparently gentler final approach of the torso than Scottish mothers, who bent at the waist with larger movements of the torso. Measures of the gap closure between the mothers' hands to their infants' heads revealed variably longer duration and distance gap closures with greater velocity by the Scottish mothers than by the Japanese mothers. Further, the sequence of Japanese mothers' body actions on approach, contact, pick-up, and hold was more coordinated at 6 months than at 9 months. Scottish mothers were generally more variable on approach. Measures of infant participation and expressivity indicate more active participation in the negotiation during the separation and pick-up phases by Scottish infants. Thus, this paper demonstrates a culturally different onset of development of joint attention in pick-up. These differences reflect cultures of everyday interaction.

Keywords: Japan and Scotland; anticipation; cultural learning; development; embodied intersubjectivity; mother–infant relations; motor control; peri-personal space.

FIGURE 1

A Japanese mothers movement and body’s trajectories during pick-up and holding (approaching phase). Part of annotated typical behaviors are shown at the top.

FIGURE 2

Examples of closure of Japanese mothers’ hand to their infants on approach to pick-up. [(A) trajectory of mothers’ hand height, and (B) velocity of mothers’ hand movement.] Mean distance between hand of mothers and head of infants at 6 months are given in bold. Individual gap closures are given in gray. The contact point, t = 0, is calculated as 5% of the maximum velocity of the gap closure.

FIGURE 3

Mean and standard deviation of height of mothers’ waist (top), and distance between mother’s hand and infant’s head (bottom) during the approach and pick-up. Lower and upper standard deviation only are given for 6 and 9 months, respectively, to preserve clarity. Note the shorter distance and greater variation in Japanese gaps at circa 2 s prior to contact at 6 months, but not at 9 months. By 9 months these differences have disappeared and the two populations are more comparable. The contact point, t = 0, was calculated as 5% of the maximum velocity of the mother–infant gap closure.

FIGURE 4

Kinematics of the final continuous gap closure between mother’s hand and her infant [(A) duration of the final continuous closures, (B) distances of the closure, (C) average velocity of the closure; *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01]. Discontinuous movements were excluded.

FIGURE 5

Box plot of distance between the mother’s hand and the infant’s head at the moment of the greeting-like behaviors of mother’s arm/hand opening and infant’s leg flailing at 6 and 9 months for Japanese and Scottish pairs. These behaviors were shown at a narrow distance around 1 m for both countries, suggesting a peri-personal space in them.