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Objective: Numerous studies have emphasized the importance of body contact for health, regulation, and development of infants as well as for parent-child interaction. Especially for infants with regulatory disorders (such as excessive crying, sleeping, and feeding problems), high-quality physical contact would be desirable. Observations in the context of parental counseling suggest that precisely these infants have a poor quality of body and eye contact. The present study compares infants with and without regulatory disorders with respect to their body and eye contact., Methods: Quality of body contact and amount of eye contact were examined by means of video ratings of the mother-child interaction. In addition, we measured the daily amount of crying, sleeping, feeding, being fussy, and quiet play in an infant behavior diary., Results: Infants with regulatory disorders scored worse in body contact (p < .01) and gaze contact (p < .001). There were also significant differences in most of the diary variables., Conclusions: Body and eye contact - basic communication skills - may be disturbed in infants with regulatory disorders, which could have an adverse effect on the regulation problems. Therapeutic interventions with affected children and their parents should aim at improving the ability of body and eye contact.

Objective: This study concerns the influence of an improvement of body contact on regulatory disorders in infancy. Two interventions were examined: 1. parent counseling on the subject of body contact; 2. practical training of body contact in connection with exposure. Both methods were supplemented by a video-based parent training., Methods: 20 infants with regulatory disorder were assigned to each treatment. Body and eye contact were examined by means of video ratings before and after treatment. In addition, we measured the daily amount of crying, sleeping, feeding, being fussy, and quiet play by means of an infant behavior diary., Results: Both interventions resulted in an improvement of body contact, though only in the group with practical training was this improvement stable after 3 months. Taking all 40 participating infants together, we found significant improvements for "fussiness," "sleep duration," "awake, quiet or playing," and a marginal significant intervention effect for the duration of crying. Both interventions showed that children who had markedly improved in body contact also improved with regard to the regulation problem. Finally, the practical training of body contact was superior to pure counseling respective to the fussiness of the infants and to their gaze contact., Conclusions: Body contact can be improved through specific therapeutic interventions. Video-based parent training in combination with interventions aiming at an improvement of body contact have a positive effect on the regulation problem.