The Influence of Temperament and Mothering on Attachment and Exploration: An Experimental Manipulation of Sensitive Responsiveness among Lower‐Class Mothers with Irritable Infants

Abstract

infants selected on irritability shortly after birth and their mothers were randomly assigned to 2 intervention and 2 control groups to test the hypothesis that enhancing maternal sensitive responsiveness will improve quality of mother-infant interaction, infant exploration, and attachment. The intervention lasted 3 months and ended when the child was 9 months of age. When infants were 9 months of age, intervention group mothers were significantly more responsive, stimulating, visually attentive, and controlling of their infant's behavior than control group mothers. Intervention infants had higher scores than control infants on sociability, self-soothing, and exploration, and they cried less. Quality of exploration also improved, with intervention infants engaged in cognitively sophisticated kinds of exploration more than control infants. At 12 months of age, significantly more intervention group dyads were securely attached than control group dyads.Over the last 15 years, researchers have attachments have been identified. The presdemonstiated that insecurely attached in-ent study is an intervention study conceptufants function less well than their securely ally linked to attachment theory, attached peers on a variety of tasks during their toddler, preschool, and beginning According to attachment theory, differschool years. Insecurely attached youngsters ences in attachment as assessed in the appear less effective in interpersonal rela-Strange Situation are related

Preditores do desenvolvimento social na infância: potencial e limitações de um modelo conceitual

“…A maioria dos pesquisadores da área concorda com a noção de que o temperamento tem bases biológicas ou constitucionais e se expressa logo após o nascimento. No entanto, há inúmeras evidências de que, assim como outras características do comportamento humano, o temperamento também sofre ação do ambiente, podendo ser por ele modificado (Boom, 1994;Bosa & Piccinini, 1994;Crockenberg & Smith, 2002;Wachs, 2002). Thomas e Chess (1977), pioneiros no estudo do temperamento, propuseram nove dimensões para sua definição: nível de atividade física, ritmo, reação da criança a novas situações, adaptabilidade, intensidade da reação emocional, atenção-persistência, limiar de resposta, distratibilidade e humor.…”

“…1989;Boom, 1994). Essa característica da mãe favoreceria a ocorrência de interações sincrônicas e mutuamente recompensadoras entre a díade.…”

“…Examinando as características e contribuições da criança para a interação, o temperamento infantil aparece também, tanto como um preditor da vulnerabilidade da criança para os problemas de externalização, quanto como um possível preditor da quantidade e do tipo de cuidado que os pais irão lhe prover (Boom, 1994). Crianças com características de temperamento difícil apresentariam maior tendência a desenvolver problemas de externalização (Guerin, Gottfried & Thomas, 1997;Sanson, Hemphill & Smart, 2004), bem como a receber cuidados menos responsivos de seus pais (Belsky, 1984).…”

Infant Attachment as a Dynamic System¹

“…Ainsworth's [1967] pioneering naturalistic observation work, conducted longitudinally across the infancy period, was designed to capture meaningful patterns of mother-infant interactive behavior in context rather than relying on frequency counts of discrete behaviors recorded without attention to the interactive environment in which they were embedded. Subsequent empirical efforts have revealed that transformations in the expression of attachment-related behavior are likely to emerge based on changes in the nature of dyadic processes such as maternal responsiveness and attention to infant interactive signals [Egeland and Farber, 1984;van den Boom, 1994]. Further, the attachment construct apparently has superior predictive validity related to a wide range of child outcomes when conceptualized as an organized system rather than as discrete units of behavior [Main et al, 1985;Sroufe and Waters, 1977].…”

“…The expanding body of research linking maternal sensitivity to attachment is predominantly correlational in nature, and with a few exceptions [e.g., van den Boom, 1994], several recent intervention studies have failed to effectively demonstrate a direct causal relationship of meaningful magnitude between the variables [van IJzendoorn, Juffer, and Duyvesteyn, 1995]. In an extensive descriptive and quantitative review of 16 preventive and therapeutic intervention studies designed to enhance parental sensitivity and ultimately infant attachment security, van IJzendoorn et al [1995] concluded that the majority of treatments implemented with parents of infants were effective in fostering improved parental sensitivity; yet, corresponding gains in attachment security were less frequently realized.…”