Infant communication and the mother-infant relationship: The importance of level of risk and construct measurement

Infants' emerging communication skills are understood to be associated with the maternal relationship, particularly for children experiencing high levels of social risk. This study attempts to determine the extent to which this association is influenced by (a) the mental health risk of the dyad and (b) different operational definitions and measurement of both the dyadic relationship and the construct of "communication." Ninety-six infants (10-30 months) and their mothers were recruited: A total of 46 were at-risk dyads referred to a mental health clinic for relationship-based emotional and/or behavioral difficulties, and 50 were nonrisk dyads not seeking mental health services and served as a normative reference or comparison group. Several factors were assessed: (a) developmental competence, (b) maternal psychopathology, (c) quality of mother-infant interaction during play, (d) attachment security classification, (e) prelinguistic and social-affective communication, and (f) linguistic communication. In all infants studied, the quality of mother-infant interaction during play, rather than the attachment security classification, was associated with infants' prelinguistic and social-affective communication abilities, but not with linguistic communication. Different aspects of mother-infant interaction predicted prelinguistic communication for clinic and comparison infants whereas only infant age predicted linguistic communication. All infants displayed communication abilities in the normal range, but the statistically poorer performance demonstrated by clinic-referred infants could become clinically meaningful in later childhood. Best practices should include communication screening of infants presenting with attachment problems and screening for relational difficulties in infants presenting with communication delays.