Maternal Sensitivity to Negative Infant Emotions

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The purpose of this project is: 1) to identify affective processes that predict new mothers' sensitivity to infant distress and 2) to identify individual and family predictors of these affective processes. This work is relevant to the mental health of children because maternal sensitivity to infant distress has been a consistent predictor of positive child outcomes, but we know little about the processes that influence how mothers respond to their distressed infants. Identifying these processes will inform the development of individually tailored intervention efforts to foster sensitive maternal behavior and positive developmental outcomes. 100 primiparous mothers, 80 partners, and 100 infants recruited from prenatal classes will participate in this study. During the prenatal period, mothers will complete questionnaires about their personalities and their relationship with their own parents, mothers and partners will each rate the partner relationship, and mothers will be interviewed about their responses to videotapes of distressed infants. At 5 1/2 months post-partum, both parents will complete questionnaires assessing their partner relationship, the parenting alliance, and perceptions of infant temperament. Mothers and 6-month old infants will visit the research playroom for a videotaped observation of maternal sensitivity during activities designed to elicit infant distress to novelty and to limitations. Mothers will then view the videotape of the interaction and be interviewed about their thoughts, emotions, and goals during the interaction. It is predicted that mothers who are high on multiple emotional competencies will respond more sensitively to infant distress than other mothers, having emotional needs met by parents in childhood will predict mothers' emotional competencies, and this association will be mediated by current personality characteristics and moderated by infant temperament and the quality of the current partner relationship. Results will extend our knowledge of the processes that influence maternal sensitivity in emotionally arousing settings, a critical context for children's emotional development.