Maternal Sensitivity to Negative Infant Emotions

描述(由申请者提供)：本项目的目的是：1)确定预测新妈妈对婴儿痛苦的敏感性的情感过程；2)确定这些情感过程的个人和家庭预测因素。这项工作与儿童的心理健康有关，因为母亲对婴儿痛苦的敏感度一直是孩子积极结局的预测指标，但我们对影响母亲如何应对婴儿痛苦的过程知之甚少。确定这些过程将有助于发展个性化的干预努力，以促进敏感的母亲行为和积极的发展结果。从产前班招募的100名初产母亲、80名伴侣和100名婴儿将参与这项研究。在产前阶段，母亲将完成关于她们的个性和她们与自己父母的关系的问卷调查，母亲和伴侣将每个人对伴侣关系进行评分，母亲将就她们对痛苦婴儿的录像带的反应进行采访。在产后5个半月，父母双方将完成问卷，评估他们的伴侣关系，父母联盟，以及对婴儿气质的看法。母亲和6个月大的婴儿将参观研究游戏室，录像观察母亲在活动期间对母亲的敏感性，这些活动旨在引发婴儿对新奇事物和局限性的苦恼。然后，母亲们将观看互动的录像带，并接受关于她们在互动过程中的想法、情绪和目标的采访。据预测，多重情绪能力高的母亲会比其他母亲对婴儿痛苦的反应更敏感，童年时父母满足的情绪需求将预测母亲的情绪能力，这种联系将由当前的人格特征中介，并受到婴儿气质和当前伴侣关系质量的调节。结果将扩大我们对情绪唤醒环境中影响母亲敏感性的过程的了解，情绪唤醒环境是儿童情绪发展的关键环境。

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.