This review focuses on infants' emerging awareness of mental states and demonstrates how cultural models-consisting of parenting beliefs and practices-interact dynamically with biologically prepared developmental potentialities in shaping infant behavior and development. Contrasting very different cultural contexts, it is suggested that caregivers' visual contingent responsiveness and associate...

In response to D. Cicchetti's (1998) and W. A. Mason's (1998) commentaries, this article scrutinizes infant maltreatment in monkeys and its public health implications. Studies of infant abuse and neglect in monkeys have used operational definitions based on (a) adult behavior or (b) adult behavior and infant outcome (depending on data available for analysis). Direct comparisons between the inci...

This study tests the idea that mothers' self-efficacy beliefs mediate the effects on parenting behavior of variables such as depression, perceptions of infant temperamental difficulty, and social-marital supports. Subjects were 48 clinically depressed and 38 nondepressed mothers observed in interaction with their 3-13-month-old infants (M = 7.35 months). As predicted, maternal self-efficacy bel...

Introduction: Measuring the patient mortality rate is the most important indicator for the evaluation of healthcare capabilities in intensive care units in hospitals and health systems. This study aims to investigate the impact of the socio economic status of households on premature infant mortality in hospitals affiliated to the Tehran University of Medical Sciences. <st...

Temperament works in combination with a child's environment to influence early socioemotional development. We examined whether maternal caregiving behavior at infant age 9 months moderated the relation between infant temperamental fear (9 months) and observations of children's social behavior with an unfamiliar peer at age 2 in a typically-developing sample of 155 children. When infants receive...

Early adverse caregiving experiences constitute an important risk factor for the development of disorganized attachment in infancy, especially extreme insensitivity and frightening behavior associated with an unresolved loss or trauma. Using existing measures for frightening parenting and disrupted communication, we developed a new measure assessing Disconnected and extremely Insensitive Parent...

Clinical aspects of the mother-infant relationship and related issues are well studied and very relevant to medical practice. Nevertheless, some approaches in this context cannot plausibly be investigated in humans due to their ethical implications and to the potential harm to the mother's and child's health. Studies on maternal behavior in animals have evident importance to some clinical field...

Maternal behavior is regulated by several neurotransmitters, neuropeptides, and hormones. This mini-review focuses on the role of cholecystokinin (CCK), a neuropeptide and gut hormone best known as a satiety signal, in mediating maternal behavior. In addition to the role of CCK in the infant in mother-infant interactions, maternal CCK appears to also be important. We discuss maternal behavior r...

OBJECTIVE To examine whether a supportive nursing intervention that promoted kangaroo holding of healthy preterm infants by their mothers during the early weeks of the infant's life facilitated coregulation between mother and infant at 6 months of age. DESIGN Randomized controlled trial. PARTICIPANTS Sixty-five mother/infant dyads with mean gestational age at birth of 33 weeks. Fifty percen...