A pilot study on early mother–infant communication during and after NICU admission

ABSTRACT

Premature children or infants with neonatal pathologies have a higher risk of developing communicative problems. This pilot study aimed to explore communicative behaviour between the mothers and the infants during the hospitalization in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) and follow-up paediatric visit. The verbal interactions in the NICU were observed using an Observational Scale (N-EOV-INC). Observations at follow-up were carried out in 9 mothers and their high-risk children at infant's age around 9 and 11 months. The results show that the number of words produced by the mother during follow-up was associated both with the number of verbal interactions initiated by the mother and infant replies during NICU stay. The infant's verbal responses during neonatal admission were also related with the number of words uttered by the mother at follow-up. Our study is a first exploratory investigation on the communicative interaction between mothers and their high-risk children.

KEYWORDS:

• Communicative interactions
• mother–child
• observation
• NICU admission

Acknowledgements

We thank to the Department of Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of Groningen, The Netherlands.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Maria Paulina Hauser (1985) is an assistant professor in Psychology Department at Universidad Nacional de San Luis, Argentina. She is a Ph.D. candidate at the same University; she has a grant from the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Argentina. Her research theme is early mother–infant interactions and its influence in child's development. She is currently interested in perinatal psychology, infant development and behavioural observation.

Marijn van Dijk (1972) is an associate professor in Developmental Psychology at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Her research theme is early social and cognitive development from a complexity approach. Specific topics are: parent–child interaction, language, cognition, feeding, and intra-individual variability. Most studies are focused on change processes and the observation of interaction behaviours in naturalistic circumstances.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Argentina and by Erasmus Mundus – Peace Project.