Elsevier

Infant Behavior and Development

Volume 20, Issue 3, July–September 1997, Pages 283-296
Infant Behavior and Development

Maternal responsiveness and infant mental abilities: Specific predictive relations

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0163-6383(97)90001-1Get rights and content

Abstract

Specific predictive relations between mothers' responsiveness to their 5-month-olds' nondistress activities and vocal distress and infants' attention span, symbolic play, and language comprehension at 13 months were examined in 36 dyads in a short-term prospective longitudinal study. Maternal responsiveness to infant nondistress activities at 5 months, but not responsiveness to infant distress, uniquely predicted infant attention span and symbolic play, but not infant language comprehension. Mothers' responsiveness at 13 months was positively and consistently, but not significantly, associated with all three infant abilities. The results support a view that the effects of maternal responsiveness on infant mental development are specific and indirect rather than generic and direct and recommend further differentiation of infant activity, maternal responsiveness, and child outcome in studies of children's early mental development.

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      Timed event sequences define synchrony as temporal and sequential contingency – whether one behavior is statistically likely to follow another (within a defined time window) compared to not being followed by that behavior. It is notable that maternal responsiveness to infant vocalizations in particular was significantly contingent in each immigrant sample in this study as it was in Argentine, Japanese, South Korean, and European American dyads in Bornstein et al. (2015) and as it is in other research (Van Egeren et al., 2001), because contingent maternal responsiveness is believed to promote later language and cognitive development (Bornstein & Tamis-LeMonda, 1997; Bomstein et al., 1999; Gros-Louis et al., 2014; Ferjan Ramírez et al., 2018). However, not all infants in this study responded contingently to their mothers’ vocalizations.

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