Behind the Smile: Mental Health Implications of Mother-Infant Interactions Revealed Through Smile Analysis

TL;DR

This study analyzes maternal smiles during mother-infant interactions to understand emotional regulation, revealing correlations between smile dynamics and maternal mental health, thus providing insights into emotional labor in early caregiving.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of maternal smile features and their relation to emotional states, advancing understanding of emotion regulation in mother-infant interactions.

Findings

Smile dynamics correlate with maternal emotional state

Specific smile features are linked to maternal mental health

Methodological approaches reveal temporal evolution of maternal smiles

Abstract

Mothers of infants have specific demands in fostering emotional bonds with their children, characterized by dynamics that are different from adult-adult interactions, notably requiring heightened maternal emotional regulation. In this study, we analyzed maternal emotional state by modeling maternal emotion regulation reflected in smiles. The dataset comprises N=94 videos of approximately 3 plus or minus 1-minutes, capturing free play interactions between 6 and 12-month-old infants and their mothers. Corresponding demographic details of self-reported maternal mental health provide variables for determining mothers' relations to emotions measured during free play. In this work, we employ diverse methodological approaches to explore the temporal evolution of maternal smiles. Our findings reveal a correlation between the temporal dynamics of mothers' smiles and their emotional state. Furthermore, we identify specific smile features that correlate with maternal emotional state, thereby enabling informed inferences with existing literature on general smile analysis. This study offers insights into emotional labor, defined as the management of one's own emotions for the benefit of others, and emotion regulation entailed in mother-infant interactions.