Home movies of infants later diagnosed as having early childhood
psychoses were compared with movies of normal control infants. A scale of
attachment indicators measured mother-infant dyadic avoidance and
reciprocity in the first 6 months of the infant's life. Three judges blind
to diagnosis saw a general trend to dampened interaction for prepsychotic
infants and their mothers. Prepsychotic and normal infants were not
significantly different in touching and eye gaze behaviors, whereas mothers
of prepsychotic infants exhibited less adequate eye gaze and touching than
mothers of normal infants.
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