Malnutrition and Mother-Infant Asynchrony: Slow Mental Development

Abstract

This paper suggests an explanation for the link between environment, malnutrition and rate of mental development. Its basic assumption is that biological factors, such as malnutrition or perinatal traumas, and difficult socioeconomic conditions interact to slow mental development by undermining the establishment and maintenance of a 'syntonic', 'synchronic' and 'reciprocal' relationship between the child and the mother.The family in a deprived social environment is usually burdened with socioeconomic and health problems. In these circumstances, the child will rarely find in its immediate environment a person available and prepared to 'syntonize', i.e. to tune in to him, and to be stimulating and responsive to his behavior. At the same time, children born in this environment, because of malnutrition and other ailments, will often be biologically less able to be stimulating and responsive to their caregivers. These children show apathy, irritability and a loss of interest in the social environment. Their behavior is often more disorganized and less predictable than that of the controls, requiring a special effort from those who interact with them to achieve syntony and synchrony with them. The combination of these conditions, acting throughout the child's early years, creates a cycle of interactional deprivation, which inhibits its intellectual development. In order to break this cycle, one needs to improve the environmental situation of the family in addition to improve its nutritional status.