Abstract

Communication deviance (CD) reflects features of the content or manner of a person's speech that may confuse the listener and inhibit the establishment of a shared focus of attention. The construct was developed in the context of the study of familial risks for psychosis based on hypotheses regarding its effects during childhood. It is not known whether parental CD is associated with nonverbal parental behaviors that may be important in early development. This study explored the association between CD in a cohort of mothers (n = 287) at 32 weeks gestation and maternal sensitivity with infants at 29 weeks in a standard play procedure. Maternal CD predicted lower overall maternal sensitivity (B = -.385; p < .001), and the effect was somewhat greater for sensitivity to infant distress (B = -.514; p < .001) than for sensitivity to nondistress (B = -.311; p < .01). After controlling for maternal age, IQ and depression, and for socioeconomic deprivation, the associations with overall sensitivity and sensitivity to distress remained significant. The findings provide new pointers to intergenerational transmission of vulnerability involving processes implicated in both verbal and nonverbal parental behaviors.

Highlights

  • All outputs in CentAUR are protected by Intellectual Property Rights law, including copyright law

  • This study explored the association between Communication deviance (CD) in a cohort of mothers (n = 287) at 32 weeks gestation and maternal sensitivity with infants at 29 weeks in a standard play procedure

  • Just as important for the present purposes, Wynne (1968) originally conceived CD to be a risk marker for parental mental processes that disrupt early caregiving (Singer & Wynne, 1966b), but this possibility is difficult to test in studies that focus exclusively on verbal communication between parents and verbally competent children. We addressed both of these issues by investigating whether CD measured during pregnancy was a significant predictor of caregiver–infant interaction at 29 weeks

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Summary

Introduction

All outputs in CentAUR are protected by Intellectual Property Rights law, including copyright law. These atypicalities are argued to impair the development of conversational alignment between interlocutors, compromising shared meaning and grounding (i.e., mutual knowledge, beliefs, and assumptions; Miklowitz & Stackman, 1992; Nuechterlein, Goldstein, Ventura, Dawson, & Doane, 1989; Singer & Wynne, 1965a, 1965b; Wynne & Singer, 1963a, 1963b; Wynne, Singer, Bartko, & Toohey, 1977) They are subtle and can range from ambiguous linguistic references (e.g., “Kid stuff that’s one thing but something else is different too”; Cite this article: de Sousa P, Sellwood W, Fien K, Sharp H, Pickles A, Hill J, Abbott K, Fisher L, Bentall RP (2018). In a longitudinal study of children attending a child guidance service, Goldstein (1987) found that both CD and EE were independently strong predictor of later psychosis

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