The development of eye contact between mothers and normal versus Down's syndrome infants.

Eye contact between mothers and 7 normal as well as 5 Down's syndrome infants was recorded over Ss' 1st 6 mo of life, both during naturalistic face-to-face interactions (mobile condition) and when mothers were silent and kept their faces still (immobile condition). Mental Development Index scores from the Bayley Scales of Infant Development were 66–202 for Down's syndrome Ss and 99–220 for normals. In the mobile condition normals consistently showed double peak patterns in the development of eye contact at 7 and 14 wks of age. Analysis of temporal and discriminative aspects of the eye contact revealed qualitative differences between the 2 peaks. Down's syndrome Ss showed delays in the onset of eye contact and in the establishment of high levels of this behavior. Once these levels were attained during the 3rd mo, high overall levels as well as long episodes of eye contact were maintained for much longer than in the normals. Although this appeared to be beneficial for the formation of the mother–infant bond, it also indicated increasing delays in the development of new functional uses of eye contact. Impairments in both maturational and psychological processes were thus implied. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)