The relationship of obstetric ultrasound to parent and infant behavior.

There is inconsistency in the obstetric literature regarding the relationship between the mother's knowledge of fetal health gained by ultrasound and maternal psychological attachment to the fetus. To evaluate the relationship more precisely, this study assessed variables of physician-patient interaction, parental mental health in pregnancy and infancy, and 3-month infant and parent behavior. The results show that maternal mental health scores increased as a function of the stress associated with an "at risk" pregnancy necessitating ultrasound assessment. As the parent received more definitive information, scores on measures of anxiety, depression, and hostility decreased. There was no significant relationship, however, between definitive information gained through ultrasound and later parent and infant behavior in play interaction. Shifts in fetal and neonatal health status and the positive interaction between physician and parent suggest the need for further analysis.

Mother-infant engagements in dyads with handicapped and nonhandicapped infants: a pilot study.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of a handicapping condition on mother-infant interactions and, to investigate the conditions under which coordinated attention to an object and a person is demonstrated. This study provides a unique opportunity to make across-mother and within-mother comparisons of mother-infant interactions in two sets of fraternal twins. In each set, one infant was handicapped whereas the other was nonhandicapped. Microanalyses of several aspects of mother-infant free-play sessions showed that handicapped infants emitted fewer object-directed behaviors, had fewer instances in which their leads were followed, and spent relatively little time in joint attention with mother. The data also suggest that repetitive sequences with an object may be an important context in which coordinated attention is demonstrated.

Attentiveness and responsiveness to auditory stimuli of children at risk for mental retardation.

The major hypothesis in the present study was that differences between high-risk and low-risk children in performance on standardized tests of cognitive ability would be explained, in part, by differences in attentiveness to auditory stimuli and differences in task orientation. The data collected revealed the anticipated higher standardized test scores for low-risk children. Within the high-risk sample, few differences were found between children who attended an intervention day-care program and those who did not. Measures from a laboratory task and a free-play observation suggested that attention is a key factor in understanding the high-risk child's development and also that differences in attention between high- and low-risk children can be reliably obtained as early as 3 years of age. A lessened attention span was demonstrated by high-risk children to both auditory and visual stimuli if either were complex or demanding.

Social class differences in dyadic involvement during infancy.

The social interactions of 60 mother-infant pairs were observed for 25 min in a seminaturalistic setting when the infants were 6 months old and again at 20 months. 46 of the infants were termed at high risk for later school failure due to the socioeconomic situations of their families. Half of these high-risk infants had been randomly assigned to an early intervention program. The remaining group of 14 infants was a sample drawn from the general population. Principal components analyses of the 10 behaviors scored during the session yielded a first component at both 6 and 20 months which represented "dyadic involvement." Comparing the 3 groups of dyads on the proportion within each who scored positively on the dyadic-involvement component, it was evident that the groups did not differ at 6 months but did differ at 20 months. The changes in level of interaction across time were compared with changes in scores on developmental tests. Results indicated that higher dyadic involvement at 20 months was associated with higher intellectual performance.

Predicting IQ from mother-infant interactions.

Longitudinal observations of maternal and infant characteristics were used to investigate the consequences of early day-care intervention for infants at high risk for intellectual retardation due to sociocultural factors. High-risk infants and their mothers were compared on social and intellectual characteristics with a control group not enrolled in an intervention program and with a random sample of mother-child dyads from the general population. Results from group comparisons indicated that mothers of high-risk infants in a day-care intervention group interacted with their infants in ways quite similar to mother of high-risk infants who were not enrolled in the intervention program. Both high-risk groups differed from the general population of mothers on interaction and attitudinal measures. Changes across time on the measures taken were roughly parallel from all three groups. Multiple regression analyses using maternal variables and mother-infant interactional variables to predict 36-month Stanford-Binet scores for the high-risk samples indicated that children's intelligence was predictable from previous maternal behaviors and attitudes, particularly for the control group, and that early day-care intervention apparently had altered the predictiveness of some maternal factors.