When Eye-Contact Is Challenged: Understanding Early Interactions Between Low-Vision Infants and Their Parents

Parent-child interaction is essential to promote adaptive emotional, cognitive, and social development. The majority of previous research on parent-child interaction is largely dependent on face-to-face exchanges that require the interactive partners to visually recognize reciprocal communicative bids. Therefore, previous findings in the field can only partially apply to the early interactive patterns occurring between visually impaired infants and their parents. The first part of the present chapter presents a systematic review of the available evidence on parent-child interaction in the context of developmental visual impairment. The second part of the chapter presents insights from the “Maternal Engagement & Eye-Tracking” (MEET) study protocol, aimed at investigating the association between maternal sensitivity and stress regulation skills in children with neuro-visual disabilities. The findings summarized in this chapter may inform clinical practice and early parenting intervention in the field of visual sensory impairment, but have also implications for research focused on parent-child interaction in typical child development.