Maternal Touch During Mother–Infant Interactions in Infants With and Without an Elevated Likelihood for Autism: Links With Symptom‐Level Difficulties of Maternal Psychological Stress

Infants at elevated likelihood for autism (EL infants) have varied developmental outcomes. This exposes parents to a unique parenting journey, and in some, heightened psychological stress. This study investigated how maternal psychological stress is linked to variations in mother-infant interactions, specifically touch. We focused on mothers of EL infants, including infants with an older autistic sibling and infants born preterm (< 30 weeks), as well as mothers of infants at typical likelihood for autism (TL infants). At 10 months, maternal touch was coded during mother-infant interactions (n = 100) and psychological stress was measured using the Brief Symptom Inventory (n = 108). Results showed that mothers of sibling infants (n = 44) reported higher depressive symptoms compared to mothers of TL infants (n = 22). Mothers of preterm infants (n = 39) used less affectionate and caregiving touch and had shorter total touch duration, compared to mothers of TL infants (n = 20), and to a lesser extent, mothers of sibling infants (n = 41). In addition, mothers of sibling infants exhibited more high-intensity touch than both mothers of preterm and TL infants. Notably, increased depressive symptoms were associated with decreased touch duration in mothers of sibling (n = 41) and preterm infants (n = 39) only. These findings underscore the complex relationship between maternal depressive symptoms and maternal use of touch.