Intervention to improve mother-infant interaction and infant development

✍ Scribed by Partricia M. Crittenden; Martha E. Snell

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1983
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 506 KB
• Volume: 4
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0163-9641
• DOI: 10.1002/1097-0355(198321)4:1<23::aid-imhj2280040104>3.0.co;2-x

✦ Synopsis

Thirty-three infants at risk for developmental delay were videotaped interacting with their mothers. Maternal position during interaction (facing, beside, or behind the infant) was strongly related to the frequency of maternal interactional behavior and to indices of infant communication and cognitive development. Intervention to teach mothers to use the facing position showed that improvement in position was related to increases in both maternal interactional behavior and infant development. Because the mother's position is easily assessed, understood, and changed by a mother, it is potentially useful to early intervention programs, particularly those serving at risk populations.

The recent micro-analytic studies of mother-infant interaction have led to several points of agreement. First, normal interaction is a highly complex, intricately synchronized process .1,2.3, Second, although mothers often have a general plan for the interaction, they are not consciously aware of the intricate details of their own behavi~r.~. Third, it is apparent that, although some dyads show appropriate interactions, some individual dyads and some groups of "at risk" dyads do n0t.2~5.6, Finally, there is increasing interest in the relationship of the process of interaction to infant mastery of prelinguistic and cognitive skills during the first two years of life.7,8

These ideas formed the basis of an exploratory study aimed at (1) identifying qualitative differences in the interactions of low-income, disadvantaged dyads, (2)using these differences as the basis of a brief intervention to improve dyadic interaction through changing maternal behavior, and (3) relating the qualitative categories to the communicative and cognitive development of the infants.