Pilot study evidence suggests that mother-infant dyads respond differently to technoference following phone calls and...

While studies suggest that maternal smartphone use causes disruptions to mother-infant interactions and distress to the infant, little work currently explores how mother-infant dyads co-regulate after periods of technoference, or how different modes of smartphone use impact co-regulation strategies within the dyad. This pilot study used a modified still-face paradigm to explore differential impacts of texting and phone call on mother-infant emotion regulation behavioral strategies after technoference. We recruited 46 mother-infant dyads, living in Scotland, where the infant was aged 3-6 months old. Linear modeling identified that after a phone call, synchronous negative affect significantly increased compared to free play (t(131) = 3.26, p < .01, d = .68), while after texting, synchronous negative affect was significantly higher still (t(131) = 7.03, p < .001, d = 1.47). Conversely, synchronous positive affect significantly reduced after a phone call compared to free play (t(131) = -4.42, p < .001, d = -0.92) and significantly reduced further still after texting (t(131) = -6.69, p < .001, d = -1.40). This has direct implications for maternal support and education, suggesting that communicating using audio functions rather than texting has the potential to reduce experiences of mother-infant negative affect after episodes of technoference.