An infant's cry, and a mother's inherent reactivity to the sound of crying, may help shape the early interactions between mother and child. We report on the contributions of maternal cry reactivity and neonatal cry acoustics to observed mother-infant interaction in a naturalistic environment. We assessed individual differences in two measures of cry reactivity, cardiac response and ratings of aversiveness. These aspects of cry reactivity were elicited in 60 pregnant women while they listened to recordings of unfamiliar infant cries. After these women gave birth, their own 2-week-old infants' spontaneous cries were recorded and acoustic parameters were derived. Mother-infant interaction was assessed with standardized in-home observations at 3 and 12 months postnatally.

Using hierarchical multiple regression techniques, it was determined that mothers' prenatal ratings of cry recordings as more aversive and extreme neonatal acoustics each contributed to less social-affective exchange between mother and infant at 3 months of age (with respective contributions to social-affective variance of 14% (β=-.37, p<.001) and 7% (β=-.28, p<.05)). While continuity from 3 to 12 months was demonstrated for the social-affective dimension (r =.52, p<.0001) as well as an object-oriented dimension (r =.28, p<.05) of mother-infant interaction, the contributions of maternal subjective aversiveness and extreme cry acoustics to these dimensions were not apparent by the end of the first year of life.

Taken together, these data indicate that patterns of extreme neonatal cry acoustics and maternal subjective experience of strong aversiveness to generic infant cries in the prenatal period are associated with a somewhat more negative course for early mother-infant interactions. In our study's normative group of children and mothers, this course does not persist. We speculate that a more negative course might continue in groups of vulnerable mothers (e.g., adolescent mothers, disadvantaged mothers, mothers with a history of psychiatric disorder) and/or infants (e.g., premature infants, infants with colic).