Influences of maternal behavior on infants' contingency detection and cognitive and emotional development

早期的自我认识是随着婴儿意识到自我行为与外部变化之间的关系而产生的。婴儿感知其行为变化的最容易获得的来源通常是与母亲的互动。母亲倾向于以夸张和感知显著的方式反映婴儿的行为，使婴儿容易认识到自己行为的外部影响。母亲对婴儿行为的反应是有选择性的，主要是对被认为含有情感内容的行为作出反应。这种母亲对婴儿情绪行为的镜像有助于婴儿调节自己情绪的能力。然而，母亲对婴儿的偶发反应程度各不相同。婴儿对与母亲一起经历的特定水平的偶然性很敏感，并且在新情况下更喜欢这些水平的偶然性，这使得他们在这些水平上的经验很容易延续下去。因此，母亲对婴儿行为的偶然性或镜像的个体差异影响了婴儿正在形成的认知和情感自我知识。理论家提出，婴儿在母亲互动中的偶然性经验也有助于婴儿后来的认知能力，将他人的行为解释为有意的。从大约9个月大的时候开始，婴儿表现出共同的注意力，因为他们参与的活动中承认有一个伴侣的参与。共同关注表明一种新兴的理解，即他人是有意图的存在，其行为是有目的的。该研究项目调查了母亲偶然性或镜像行为的个体差异对婴儿对自我和他人的新兴理解的影响，通过检查婴儿在面对面互动中检测其行为效果和调节其情绪的能力，以及婴儿后来作为有意识的存在对他人作出反应的能力。这项研究进一步了解了婴儿的知觉、认知和情感发展，特别是当它们与早期自我认识及其后果有关时。在实际层面上，这项研究可以为那些在早期发展中对自我和他人的理解有风险的儿童提供干预方案，无论是由于身体残疾还是家庭环境。

Early self knowledge arises with infants' awareness of the relation between self actions and external changes. Infants' most accessible source of perceiving change contingent on their behavior typically occurs in interactions with their mothers. Mothers tend to reflect infants' behavior in exaggerated and perceptually salient ways, allowing infants to easily recognize the external effect of their behavior. Mothers are selective in their responsiveness to infants' actions, responding primarily to behavior perceived to have emotional content. Such maternal mirroring of infants' emotional behavior facilitates infants' ability to regulate their own emotions. Yet mothers vary in the level of contingent responsiveness they provide to infants. Infants are sensitive to the particular levels of contingency experienced with their mothers and prefer those levels of contingency in novel situations, which allows their experience with such levels to be easily perpetuated. Thus, individual differences in mothers' contingency or mirroring of infants' behavior affect infants' emerging cognitive and emotional self knowledge. Theorists propose that infants' experience with contingency in maternal interaction also facilitates infants' later cognitive ability to interpret the actions of others as intentional. Beginning around nine months of age, infants display joint attention, in that they engage in activities with objects that acknowledge the participation of a partner. Joint attention indicates an emerging understanding of others as intentional beings whose actions are purposeful. The research program investigates the influence of individual differences in maternal contingency or mirroring behavior on infants' emerging understanding of self and other by examining infants' ability to detect the effect of their behavior and regulate their emotions during face-to-face interactions, and infants' later capacities to respond to others as intentional beings. The research furthers the understanding of infants' perceptual, cognitive, and emotional developments, particularly as they relate to early self knowledge and its consequences. At a practical level, the research can inform intervention programs for children at risk in their early developmental understanding of self and others, either through physical disability or family circumstances.