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The Development of Maternal Touch Across the First Year of Life

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Sample

Hypothesis

Affectionate touch would be the most growth-promoting form of touch and would have the closest relations to mother-infant reciprocity as compared to all other forms of touch. Reciprocity was selected as an outcome variable due to the reported links between mother-infant reciprocity with the child’s cognitive, linguistic and social-emotional outcomes.

Variables Measured, Instruments Used

Maternal touch - the Touch Scoring Instrument
Maternal sensitivity and dyadic reciprocity - the Coding Interactive Behavior System

Design—Cross-sectional

Findings

All forms of touch—affectionate, stimulating and instrumental touch—decreased across the first year of life.
There was a significant decrease in affectionate and stimulating touch between six and nine months.
Results showed that maternal affectionate touch was a significant predictor of dyadic reciprocity; affectionate touch explained unique variance in dyadic reciprocity above and beyond the effects of infant age, gender, birth order or ethnicity.

Limitations

This was a cross-sectional study rather than longitudinal; therefore the stability of touch behavior in individual dyads was not studied or accounted for.
Convenience sample
The study is based on observing only one interaction among the dyads and therefore may not be truly representative of dyad reciprocity.
Procedural differences in carrying out the study for the different age groups may pose some limitations on general conclusions.

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