Studying mother-infant interaction: The effects of context and length of observation in two subcultural groups

Author(s): Lamb, M. E., Scholmerich, A.

Journal/Book: Infant Behav Develop. 1997; 20: 55 Old Post Rd NO.2, PO Box 5297, Greenwich, CT 06831-0504. Ablex Publ Corp. 325-337.

Abstract: In most studies, mother-infant interactional attunement is observed in either one or two contexts or in brief, unstructured sessions at home. We thus do not know whether the observed levels of interactional attunement are influenced by the context, whether context influences the levels of interactional attunement differently in diverse samples, or whether the length of observation influences the stability of the interactional measures. To address these issues, we observed mother-infant interactions over a complete day in two culturally distinct samples. Twenty infants whose parents immigrated From Central America (CA) and 21 infants from middle-class Euro-American (EA) backgrounds were observed for 12 hr when they were 3 months old. We used the Strange Situation procedure when they were 13 months old to validate our measures of interactional attunement and disharmony. These preliminary analyses showed that the attunement scores predicted security of attachment as expected and were thus valid observational measures, whereas the disharmony scores predicted attachment as expected only in the Euro-American sample. There were no group differences in the amounts of time spent by the mothers and infants in well-attuned states, or in different functional contexts, but the EA dyads spent more time in disharmonious states. The amounts of time spent in well-attuned and in disharmonious interactions varied substantially across contexts with notable differences between the two groups. Forty-five min blocks of observation yielded highly unstable measures of individual differences but stability increased considerably as the duration of the observations was expanded. The results indicate that apparent subcultural differences in attunement are maximized by focusing on single contexts and minimized by averaging across a variety of naturally occurring contexts.

Note: Article Lamb ME, Nichhd, Sect Social & Emot Dev, 9190 Rockville Pike, Bethesda,MD 20814 USA

Keyword(s): Hispanic Americans; context effects; cultural differences; class differences; mother-infant interaction; 3-month-olds; FAMILY DEVELOPMENT PROJECT; FULL-TERM INFANTS; FATHER-INFANT; 1ST YEAR; MATERNAL SENSITIVITY; ATTACHMENT SECURITY; PENNSYLVANIA INFANT; BEHAVIOR; DISTRESS; QUALITY

Zurück | Weiter