The relations between early infant-mother attachment and children's social competence and behavior problems during the preschool and early school-age period were examined in more than 1,000 children under conditions of decreasing, stable, and increasing maternal parenting quality. Infants' Strange Situation attachment classifications predicted mothers' reports of children's social competence an...

Charting the dynamic character of mother-infant interaction requires using observational systems of sequential coding in real time. A longitudinal study was designed to approach maternal sensitivity in a more complex way using sequential analysis. The study was conducted with 20 high- and 20 low-risk mothers and their infants (aged: 3, 12 and 15 months) to examine the relation among mothers' ri...

Prior research indicates that being reared in stressful environments is associated with earlier onset of menarche in girls. In this research, we examined (a) whether these effects are driven by exposure to certain dimensions of stress (harshness or unpredictability) during the first 5 years of life and (b) whether the negative effects of stress on the timing of menarche are buffered by secure i...

The attachment and the caregiving system are complementary systems which are active simultaneously in infant and mother interactions. This ensures the infant survival and optimal social, emotional, and cognitive development. In this brief review we first define the characteristics of these two behavioral systems and the theory that links them, according to what Bowlby called the "attachment-car...

In a longitudinal study, internationally adopted children (N = 146) placed before 6 months of age were followed from infancy to age 7. Results showed that girls were better adjusted than boys, except in cognitive development, and that easy temperament was associated with higher levels of social, cognitive, and personality development and fewer behavior problems. Higher quality of child-mother r...

This longitudinal study examined the extent to which dimensions of infant negative temperament in the first year predicted IQ at age 3, and whether these associations depended on the quality of the infant–mother attachment relationship. In a sample of 63 infant–mother dyads, mothers completed Rothbart's (1981) IBQ when infants were 4 and 12 months, mothers and infants participated in Ainsworth ...

PURPOSE This study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of a mother/infant-toddler health program developed to enhance parenting knowledge, behavior and confidence in low income mothers and home environment. METHODS A one-group pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design was used. Sixty-nine dyads of mothers and infant-toddlers (aged 0-36 months) were provided with weekly intervention f...

OBJECTIVE The prevalence of overweight among infants and toddlers has increased dramatically in the past three decades, highlighting the importance of identifying factors contributing to early excess weight gain, particularly in high-risk groups. Parental feeding styles and the attitudes and behaviors that characterize parental approaches to maintaining or modifying children's eating behavior a...

This study investigates the influence of infant irritability, maternal responsiveness, and social support on the development of secure and anxious infant-mother attachments at 1 year. Infant irritability was assessed during the neonatal period using the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale, maternal responsiveness to crying was measured during observations at 3 months, and social support was ba...

BACKGROUND Children with cleft lip and palate are at risk for psychological problems. Difficulties in mother-child interactions may be relevant, and could be affected by the timing of lip repair. METHOD We assessed cognitive development, behaviour problems, and attachment in 94 infants with cleft lip (with and without cleft palate) and 96 non-affected control infants at 18 months; mother-infa...