Examined the feelings of mothers when temporarily leaving their infants--who were perceived to cry excessively--to other caretakers. Found through interviews that the mothers were anxious when separated from the infant, had an intensive perception of the infant's crying, and had difficulty sharing responsibility for the infant. (EV)

Parent interviews with low-income, urban mothers in Korea, India, Sweden, France, and the United States provided a profile of behaviors that mothers used in response to various child behaviors. Although mothers exhibited some behaviors typical of their cultural groups, there were more similarities than differences in responses across cultures.…

Evaluated the effect of pacifiers and sucrose stimulation on the heart rate, coordination, and behaviors of normal infants and infants born to methadone-maintained mothers. Found that pacifiers stimulated immediate changes in all behaviors, which returned to baseline levels when pacifiers were removed. Sucrose stimulation precipitated gradual…

Examined associations among parents' characteristics, prenatal expectations for and postpartum perceptions of infant temperament, and observers' ratings of temperament. Found that parents shared expectations for infant's emotional expressivity but differed in expectation for predictability and adaptability. Parent's postpartum ratings of…

The histories and behaviors of 5 infants with deafness or hearing deficits and other disabilities were compared with 10 at-risk infants with hearing deficits, 8 infants with hearing deficits not at risk for other disabilities, and 20 normal infants. Mothers' stress levels and infants' behaviors were assessed for the three groups. (SW)

Compared infants who had evidenced similar levels of crying as neonates but differed at five months of age. For initially high-crying infants, mothers' personality and marital quality, and infant variables discriminated stable from changing infants. Mother sensitivity and infant responsiveness at five months were related to continuity of infants'…

Proposes to identify the mechanisms underlying the links between maternal attention directing strategies and infants' focused attention. Observes onset and offset of maternal behaviors toward objects and infants' attention in a sample of 50 dyads during the first year of life. Discusses research methods, results, and implications for further…

Observed 12-month olds, with their mothers and independently, acting on objects from home and objects brought by the experimenter as new exemplars of previous toys. Found that conventional actions were more frequent in joint than in independent activity. In independent activity, conventional actions were more frequent with customary than with…

Examined validity of the California Attachment Procedure (CAP), which does not involve mother-child separations. Overall, toddlers were more likely to be classified as secure in the CAP than in the Strange Situation (SS) test. The CAP yielded higher rates of security, particularly for children in day care, and security in the CAP correlated more…

Videotaped infants with extensive day-care experience, and their mothers during "Strange" situation procedures. Compared behavior with profiles published in Ainsworth et al. (1978) for differences. Found three distinct groups of infants: securely-attached (largest group), insecurely attached (smallest group), and infants not disturbed by…

The effects of maternal antenatal and postnatal anxiety and depression on infant negative behavioral reactivity were examined in a sample of 22 mother-infant pairs. Maternal anxiety and depression were assessed by standardized measures during the third trimester of pregnancy and postpartum. Infant negative behavioral responses to novelty were…

Three issues were investigated: (a) the regulatory effects of presumed infant and maternal regulation behaviors on infant distress to novelty at 6 months, (b) stability of infant regulatory effects across contexts that vary in maternal involvement, and (c) associations and temporal dynamics between infant and maternal regulation behaviors.…

This study was aimed at sorting out conflicting results in the literature concerning 2-month-olds' sensitivity to interpersonal contingency, and investigated the potential role of infants' positive emotion in contingency detection. Infants were randomly assigned to an experimental group (EG) that was presented an uninterrupted live-replay-live…

Mastery motivation, usually measured by task persistence, is often used to predict infant competence. This study attempted to clarify how a measure of persistence can be used to facilitate the prediction of competence when examining the relationship between persistence and maternal child-rearing behavior. The measure of persistence used in this…

Three groups of 12-month-old infants (10 deaf infants with hearing parents, 10 deaf infants with deaf parents, and 10 hearing infants with hearing parents) were videotaped during free play with mothers. Infant attention state was coded, identifying periods as: (1) unengaged, (2) onlooking, (3) object-attend, (4) person-attend, (5) supported joint…