Excessive infant crying and intuitive parental care: Buffering support and its failures in parent-infant interaction

Behavioral microanalyses of early parent-infant communication have revealed nonconscious adaptive behaviors in the parent which function as effective soothing interventions and may prevent excessive infant crying. Elicited by the infant's subtle non-cry signals, parental nonconscious interventions facilitate the infant's postpartum physiological, affective, and integrative adaptation, and support non-cry communication and speech acquisition.

Reciprocal interrelations between factors of infant crying and intuitive forms of parental interventions are represented in a psychobiological interactional model predicting twofold outcomes. In one direction, parental interventions may function as a protective buffer which mitigates the effects of factors causing irritability, unexplained fussiness, and abnormal crying in infants until compensatory improvements are gradually achieved. In the other direction, intuitive parental caregiving may fail due to primary unfavorable predispositions and#shor secondarily due to the effects of infant crying. Such failure may exacerbate infant crying and start a vicious circle of decompensation leading to syndromes of neglect or abuse. The model offers a basis for both further empirical studies, and clinical improvements of diagnosis, prevention, and therapy of interactional failures.