The relation between maternal attachment and patterns of mother-infant interaction at four months.
Item
-
Title
-
The relation between maternal attachment and patterns of mother-infant interaction at four months.
-
Identifier
-
AAI9521319
-
identifier
-
9521319
-
Creator
-
Tobias, Katherine Ellin.
-
Contributor
-
Adviser: Arietta Slade
-
Date
-
1995
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Psychology, Clinical | Psychology, Developmental
-
Abstract
-
The central aim of the proposed study was to examine the link between prebirth maternal attachment status and patterns of mother-infant interaction at four months. Attachment theory assumes that the way in which a mother internally represents her own early attachment relationships influences the way she responds to her child. Based on the notion that mothers in different attachment classifications organize and regulate their experience differently, it is reasonable to expect that they regulate their interaction with their infants in distinctly different ways.;Twenty-eight women in the last trimester of pregnancy were given the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI). When the infants were four months old, the infant and mother were videotaped in face-to-face interaction for five minutes. The AAI was coded from a transcribed version of the audio tape. Each mother was assigned an attachment classification: Secure/Autonomous (F), Preoccupied (E), or Dismissing (D). The face-to-face interaction was coded using Tronick and Weinberg's Infant and Caregiver Engagement Phases (1993).;To test the hypothesis that mothers of different attachment classifications and their infants display distinctly different patterns of engagement, infant behavior patterns and maternal behavior patterns were compared separately using t-tests and dyadic factors were compared using time series analysis. The analyses included secure and preoccupied mothers and their infants, because there were too few dismissing subjects. It was found that infants of preoccupied mothers spent significantly more time looking at their mothers than infants of secure mothers. In addition, infants of preoccupied mothers smiled significantly more often at their mothers and tended to smile at their mothers a larger percentage of time altogether than infants with secure mothers. In contrast, infants with secure mothers protested or cried with their mothers for significantly longer on average than infants with preoccupied mothers. In addition, infants with secure mothers tended to spend more time visually exploring the environment than infants with preoccupied mothers. In the analysis of dyadic factors, it was found that preoccupied mothers and their infants followed each other more closely than dyads in the secure maternal attachment group, with both mother and infant demonstrating a relatively higher degree of interpersonal responsivity.;In addition, in a qualitative examination of the data it was found that mothers in each attachment group responded to infant distress with strategies that are consistent with affect regulation styles of their attachment classification. That is, preoccupied mothers exaggerated their infants' distress, dismissing mothers minimized their infants' distress, and secure mothers acknowledged their infants' distress and then helped the infant regain emotional equilibrium.;The results of this study support the hypothesis that mothers in different attachment groups regulate their interaction with their infants in characteristic ways. These data are discussed in the context of attachment theory and research, psychoanalytic theories, and infant research.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
