Introduction: Motherese, or emotional infant directed speech, is the specific form of speech used by parents to address their infants. The prosody of IDS has affective properties, expresses caregiver involvement, is a marker of caregiver-infant interaction quality. IDS prosodic characteristics can be detected with automatic analysis. We aimed to explore whether pregnant women “speak” to their unborn baby, whether they use motherese while speaking and whether anxio-depressive or obstetrical status impacts speaking to the fetus.Participants and Methods: We conducted an observational (...) study of pregnant women with gestational ages from 26 to 38 weeks. Women were recruited in a university hospital department of obstetrics. Thirty-five women agreed to participate in the study, and 26 audio records were exploitable. We collected obstetrical and sociodemographic data, pregnancy outcomes, anxiety and depressive status using the Covy and Raskin Scales, and life events using the Sensations During Pregnancy and Life Event Questionnaire. Each participant was left alone with an audio recorder with a recommendation to feel free to speak to her fetus as she would have done at home. The recording was stopped after 3 min. Audio recordings were analyzed by two methods: psycholinguist experts' annotation and computational objective automatic analyses.Results: Most mothers reported speaking to their fetuses. We found a correlation between maternal first perceptions of fetal movements and the start of mother's speaking to fetus. Motherese prosody was detected with both annotation and automatic analysis with a significant correlation between the two methods. In this exploratory study, motherese use was not associated with maternal anxiodepressive or obstetrical status. However, the more future mothers were depressed, the less they spoke with their fetuses during the recording.Conclusion: Fetal directed speech can be detected during pregnancy, and it contains a period of prosody that shares the same characteristics of motherese that can be described as prenatal motherese or emotional fetal-directed speech. This means that pregnant women start using motherese much earlier than expected. FDS seems to be correlated with maternal first perceptions of fetal movements and depression scores. However, more research is needed to confirm these exploratory results. (shrink)

As a result of evolution, human babies are born with outstanding abilities for human communication and cooperation. The other side of the coin is their great sensitivity to any clear and durable violation in their relationship with caregivers. Infant sustained social withdrawal behavior was first described in infants who had been separated from their caregivers, as in Spitz's description of “hospitalism” and “anaclitic depression.” Later, ISSWB was pointed to as a major clinical psychological feature in failure-to-thrive infants. Fraiberg also described (...) freezing behavior as one of the earliest modes of infant defense in the face of adverse situations threatening the infant's ability to synchronize with caregivers. We hypothesize that ISSWB behaviors are associated with poor vagal brake functioning and that an impaired social engagement system is induced by an impoverished and/or dangerous environment. Recent research using animal models highlight the neurobiology and the genetics of the social Approach/Withdrawal Behavior in infants. The present paper is therefore a plea for social withdrawal behavior to be attributed a more important role as a major psychological defensive mechanism in infancy, and for research into early development and early intervention to make more practical and theoretical use of this concept, thus decreasing the challenge of translation in social neurosciences. This work presents several situations involving developmental hazards in which assessment of ISSWB by means of the Alarm Distress Baby Scale has proven useful, i.e., malnutrition, effects of major maternal depression and or traumatization, assessing social withdrawal in infants with an chronic organic illness or assessing ISSWB in out of home placed infants during parental visitation. Relationships between ISSWB and other biophysiological behavioral systems are discussed, particularly links with attachment processes and Porges's polyvagal theory. (shrink)

Les avancées technologiques de ces vingt dernières années dans le domaine obstétrical ont beaucoup modifié la perception du fœtus par les parents et professionnels. Cet article propose d’analyser leur influence sur l’accession à la parentalité. Le suivi médical a beau être très soutenu au cours de la grossesse, les parents se retrouvent paradoxalement seuls pour gérer émotionnellement l’afflux d’images échographiques et intégrer ces dernières dans la construction de leur parentalité – travail plus difficile lorsqu’ils sont fragilisés par une suspicion d’anomalie (...) ou un problème personnel.L’article s’intéresse aussi au phénomène de mise en ligne sur internet des images échographiques : aurait-il un lien avec l’isolement familial et social vécu par les mères concernées? La communauté virtuelle serait-elle alors invitée à jouer un rôle de soutien dans la construction de la parentalité? (shrink)

Les avancées technologiques de ces vingt dernières années dans le domaine obstétrical ont beaucoup modifié la perception du fœtus par les parents et professionnels. Cet article propose d’analyser leur influence sur l’accession à la parentalité. Le suivi médical a beau être très soutenu au cours de la grossesse, les parents se retrouvent paradoxalement seuls pour gérer émotionnellement l’afflux d’images échographiques et intégrer ces dernières dans la construction de leur parentalité – travail plus difficile lorsqu’ils sont fragilisés par une suspicion d’anomalie (...) ou un problème personnel.L’article s’intéresse aussi au phénomène de mise en ligne sur internet des images échographiques : aurait-il un lien avec l’isolement familial et social vécu par les mères concernées? La communauté virtuelle serait-elle alors invitée à jouer un rôle de soutien dans la construction de la parentalité? (shrink)