Maternal Sensitivity to Negative Infant Emotions

描述（由申请人提供）：本项目的目的是：1）确定情感过程，预测新妈妈的敏感性婴儿痛苦和2）确定这些情感过程的个人和家庭预测。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性一直是积极的儿童结局的一致预测因素，但我们对影响母亲如何应对痛苦婴儿的过程知之甚少。识别这些过程将为制定个性化的干预措施提供信息，以促进敏感的母亲行为和积极的发展成果。100名经产母亲、80名伴侣和100名从产前培训班招募的婴儿将参与这项研究。在产前阶段，母亲将完成关于她们的性格和与父母关系的问卷，母亲和伴侣将分别对伴侣关系进行评分，母亲将接受采访，了解她们对痛苦婴儿录像带的反应。在产后5个半月，父母双方将完成问卷调查，评估他们的伴侣关系，养育联盟，和婴儿气质的看法。母亲和6个月大的婴儿将参观研究游戏室，在旨在引起婴儿对新奇事物和局限性的痛苦的活动中，对母亲的敏感性进行录像观察。然后，母亲们将观看互动的录像带，并接受采访，了解他们在互动过程中的想法、情绪和目标。据预测，母亲谁是高的多个情绪能力将更敏感地回应婴儿的痛苦比其他母亲，有情感需求的父母在童年得到满足将预测母亲的情绪能力，这种关联将介导的当前人格特征和调解的婴儿气质和质量的当前合作伙伴关系。结果将扩大我们的知识的过程中，影响母亲的敏感性，在情绪激动的设置，儿童的情绪发展的关键背景。

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.