Thirty postpartum mothers were studied to determine the impact of early provision of support/education on developing parenting skills to prevent child abuse. An experimental group received special services from student nurses; compared to controls, the group later reported more realistic expectations of infant behavior and embraced more democratic…

New research in brain development reveals the vital importance of the relationship between caregiver and child in the critical first years of life. This Spanish-language video explores the role of parents in stimulating early childhood development. The 28-minute video discusses: (1) attachment and the role of touch in creating a bond between…

Mother-infant interaction creates a context for socioemotional, behavioral, and cognitive development. This study used the Nursing Child Assessment Feeding Scale (NCAFS) and the Nursing Child Assessment Teaching Scale (NCATS) to examine mother-infant interaction in Japanese dyads. Subjects were residing in Hikkaido, Japan, and assessments were…

Traces encounters between mother and child that occur around nursing and feeding, which result in a powerful attachment. Identifies approaching solid foods and subsequent weaning as the place where detachment begins. Discusses locomotion as another way incremental steps toward independence are reached: crawling, walking, and pulling up with hands…

Investigated emotional and facial expressivity in infants who failed to thrive and normal infants who were videotaped in social and cognitive contexts. Although differences in emotional expressivity were not found, infants who failed to thrive displayed more negative effects and used their lower faces less often to express emotion. (Author/BB)

Examined association between infants' emotional reactivity and reliance on mother and cognitive and language development at 2 years. Found that infants with high reactivity and reliance on mother during emotion challenges had higher cognitive and language skills than infants with low reactivity and reliance. Poor developmental outcomes were…

The vulnerability of children to developmental problems was studied in three groups of young children: (1) children with schizophrenic mothers (N=35); (2) children with severely depressed mothers (N=19); and children with well mothers (N=21). The children ranged in age from birth to 5 years, with 64 percent under age 2, and came from families who…

This longitudinal study investigated the relationship of stress arising from medical problems of newborns to parent-infant interaction through the infant's first year. Significant interactive differences between full term and premature infants were found in feeding situations during the neonatal period and in floor play at eight months. The sample…

This short term longitudinal study of parent-infant interactions over 4 months beginning at birth examines interrelations among patterns of interactive behavior, characteristics of the parents and infants, and parental attitudes, knowledge and feelings in relation to their infants. Forty sets of mothers and fathers were observed interacting with…

This study compared infants born to narcotic addicted mothers with infants born to nonaddicted mothers and described the potential of an intervention program. Infants of five addicted women were matched with infants of five nonaddicted women on the basis of age and socioeconomic class of the mothers and on the basis of gestational ages, birth…

Twenty infants, 12 weeks of age, were subjects in an experiment to test the effects of maternal behavior on their perceptual-cognitive development. Each mother and child were observed in a controlled naturalistic setting, every 10 seconds their various behaviors were recorded, and then the mother was interviewed. During an experimental session the…

This paper describes a cross cultural study of face to face interactions between American and Gusii mothers and their infants. Observations of the Gusii people of Western Kenya suggest that the direct expression of intense affect is de-emphasized through an avoidance of direct face to face interactions. The present study investigated (1) how and…

The focus of the study reported here is on two issues: whether the two most elaborate systems of natural observation, that is, those developed by Escalona and Watts could be applied to mother-child interaction recorded in a teaching situation; and whether there are relationships between maternal-child behavior so observed, and a more extended…

The purpose of the observational system presented here is to record the behavioral interactions between infant and mother, focusing on the sequential and contextual features of the social communication patterns accessible through direct home observation of mothers and their 3- to 4-month-old infants. The present system of continuous data recording…

This study investigated the response behavior of nine infants, aged 13-15 weeks, to a recurrent pattern of visual and verbal stimuli presented by their own mothers and by female strangers. The infants were presented with the following 2-minute sequence (repeated 3 times): (1) one-half minute of an unknown female leaning over the crib with a…