Perturbation of Japanese mother-infant habitual interactions in the double video paradigm and relationship to maternal playfulness

Double video paradigm (DVP) studies have found contradictory evidence regarding the young infants’ ability to discriminate their mother's ‘replay’ image from ‘live’. This study examined the hypothesis that 4-month-old infants whose mothers showed high-levels-of-playful-behavior are more likely to discriminate social contingency in the DVP. We also examined the relationships between the infants’ DVP behaviors and mothers’ free-play behaviors at home with their 3-month-old infants. The results supported our hypothesis. Further, when the mothers’ behaviors were reduced to playful companion (PC) and sensitive support (SS) by a principal component analysis, the level of PC was closely related to the infants’ detection of social contingency, but SS was not. The different functions of mothers’ ‘playfulness’ and ‘sensitivity’ in communication with their infants are discussed.