The hypothesized relationship between mother-infant interaction style and the style of the infant's subsequent interactions is widely accepted but lacks empirical support. Prematures appear to be at greater risk for disturbed early interactions than fullterms. We believe, therefore, that prematures in particular might benefit from a direct examination of such an assumed causal relationship. The purpose of the proposed research, therefore, is to describe and understand the relationship between infant characteristics (specifically those related to prematurity), early mother-infant interaction style, and social competence, during early childhood. The subjects are 49 black inner-city mothers and their infants (26 prematures, 23 fullterms). As part of our current work we administered developmental examinations to the infants and objectively recorded behaviors of mothers and infants during early feeding interactions. Interaction indices were abstracted that characterized the style of the early interaction and predicted developmental outcome at 1 year. The proposed follow-up will consist of: (a) Observations of the child with his mother, with another adult female, and with a strange child during a semi-structured play session at age 3; and (b) Observations of the child with peers and adults during a 2-week nursery school stay at age 4. The data collected will be used to describe the normative interaction patterns of children born prematurely and of those born at term, to identify "social stars" and "socially inept" children, to describe the interaction patterns of those two types of children, and to relate all later interaction patterns to early infant characteristics and early mother-infant interaction styles.
NIH ExPorter
NIH ExPorter