Infant sounds' emotional processing in mothers: is the alloparental model involved?

The following study investigates the influence of previous experience of care towards new-borns that are not biological relatives, also known as alloparental care, on the emotional processing of infant cry in mothers. Existing research on this topic does not include the variable of past experience of care and variables of psychological dimensions of care, which this study wants to examine. Several factors that influence the emotional processing of infant cry were considered, for example individual differences in depression and anxiety levels, sensitivity to noise, interpersonal reactivity, caregiving system, alexithymia, and difficulties in regulation of emotion. Participants were 55 mothers of age between 18 and 45, and the research consisted of two phases. The first phase was an assessment of psychological well-being, demographic data and an interview on past experience of care through self-report questionnaires. The second phase consisted in a behavioural task in which participants were asked to listen to different length infant cries and report their reaction to each cry through a questionnaire which investigated four dimensions of care: desire of closure, desire of communicating, sense of care and urgency of care. We used measures of correlation analysis and regression analysis. Results showed that the four dimensions of care are reciprocally correlated, meanwhile past experience of care towards non-biologically related children, preceding mothers’ actual parental role, only partially contributes to a care-oriented psychological response of mothers to infant cries. In fact, past experience of care shows a significant effect only when mothers listen to cries of medium length (around 10 seconds). This research shows that the emotional processing of infant cry in mothers cannot be predicted solely by past experience of care, but other variables of individual differences must be considered. Further studies could implement these variables in the analysis of the data to broaden our understanding of this topic.