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Marked mirroring

Watch this video, which provides examples of mothers engaging in 'marked mirroring' with their babies.

We have examined in some detail the concept of reflective functioning, and the way in which this affects parent-infant interaction. It has been hypothesised that the particular aspect of interaction that is affected by a poor ability for reflective functioning is the parent’s mirroring of their baby’s emotions.

The above film clip demonstrates the way in which a parent’s subtle facial expressions show a baby that his feelings are understood, and help him to develop understanding about his feelings and promote his growing sense of self.

Facial expressions that help a baby to know that his feelings are understood, are known as ‘mirroring’. Mirroring is said to be ‘marked’ when the parent mirrors the emotion then quickly ‘marks’ the interaction with a reassuring expression. Mirroring shows the baby that he is understood and reflects the feeling he is experiencing. The ‘marking’ helps the baby know the feeling belongs to him and that the parent understands, but is not overwhelmed, and is therefore able to help him or her to manage such feelings.

The process of ‘marked mirroring’ takes place in repeated moments of subtle interaction that happen very quickly, and we have slowed down the film of the interaction between Luca and his mum so that you can see how she mirrors and then reassuringly ‘marks’ the mirroring.

Parent’s who are not able to think about what their baby might be feeling are not able to engage in marked mirroring. These parents typically do one of two things:

The parent fails to mark his or her emotional displays. The consequence of this is that the infant sees the parental response as reflecting the parent’s actual emotional state and can be traumatised by the uncontained affect if the caregiver’s response is negative;
The parent’s response is marked but incongruent with the baby’s affect (i.e. not mirroring what the baby is actually feeling). One of the consequences of this is that the baby will identify with the incorrectly mirrored affect, which is the basis for the development of a ‘false self’.