The purpose of this study was to examine associations among women's emotional and cognitive responses to infant fear and anger and to identify attachment linked predictors of these responses. Four hundred and forty Caucasian and African American undergraduate college women viewed video clips of two crying infants, one displaying anger and the other displaying fear. They identified what the infa...

BACKGROUND Infant mental health is a significant public health issue as early adversity and exposure to early childhood stress are significant risk factors that may have detrimental long-term developmental consequences for the affected children. Negative outcomes are seen on a range of areas such as physical and mental health, educational and labor market success, social network and establishin...

This study examined the antecedents of preschool age children's mental representations of attachment, assessed using the Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT). Antecedent predictors were maternal attachment scripts, assessed using the Attachment Script Assessment (ASA), and the child's secure base behaviors, assessed using the Attachment Q-Set (AQS). Participants were 121 mothers and their pr...

BACKGROUND Parent-infant psychotherapy (PIP) is a dyadic intervention that works with parent and infant together, with the aim of improving the parent-infant relationship and promoting infant attachment and optimal infant development. PIP aims to achieve this by targeting the mother's view of her infant, which may be affected by her own experiences, and linking them to her current relationship ...

A concept analysis, the clarification of a concept, is the first step towards building the foundations of nursing theory, research and practice. As a relevant concept for nurses working with childbearing families, parent-infant attachment is an important part of the body of nursing knowledge. Wilson's method of concept analysis was used to generate antecedents, critical attributes and consequen...

Recent behavioral and physiologic observations of infants and mothers have shown them ready to begin interacting in the first minutes of life. Included among these findings are the newborn infant's ability to crawl toward the breast to initiate suckling and mother-infant thermoregulation. The attachment felt between mother and infant may be biochemically modulated through oxytocin; encouraging ...

This study tested the relationship between preterm infant-mother attachment patterns and sociability of 3-year-old children with an unfamiliar female adult. The subjects in the study (N=48) were part of a longitudinal investigation of the developmental sequeloe of high-risk preterm birth. Results supported the study’s motor hypotheses that 3.year-olds’ behaviors and affective states vary in occ...