The link between maternal interaction style and infant action understanding

Infant Behav Dev. 2008 Jan;31(1):115-26. doi: 10.1016/j.infbeh.2007.07.003. Epub 2007 Aug 20.

Abstract

The present study investigates whether the maternal interaction style is related to 6-month-old infants' action interpretation. We tested 6-month-olds ability to interpret an unfamiliar human action as goal-directed using a modified version of the paradigm used by Woodward, A. L. (1999). Infant's ability to distinguish between purposeful and non-purposeful behaviours. Infant Behavior & Development, 22, 145-160 and Király, I., Jovanovic, B., Prinz, W., Aschersleben, G., & Gergely, G. (2003). The early origins of goal attribution in infancy. Consciousness & Cognition, 12, 732-751. Additionally, all infants and their mothers participated in a free play situation to assess maternal interaction styles as measured by the CARE-Index. According to mothers' distinct interaction styles, infants were divided into three groups. Results suggest that at 6 months of age infants of mothers with a modestly controlling interaction style are better at interpreting a human action as goal-directed than infants of sensitive and relative unresponsive mothers. The ability to understand human action as goal-directed might be a corollary of an adaptive strategy in infancy.

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Child Development*
  • Cluster Analysis
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Infant
  • Male
  • Mental Processes / physiology*
  • Mother-Child Relations*
  • Mothers / psychology*
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • Sensitivity and Specificity