BACKGROUND Twenty-to-forty percent of women experience postpartum depressive symptoms, which can affect both the mother and infant. In preterm infants, daily skin-to-skin contact (SSC) between the mother and her infant has been shown to decrease maternal postpartum depressive symptoms. In full-term infants, only two studies investigated SSC effects on maternal depressive symptoms and found simi...

Rodent epigenetic models of early maternal care have demonstrated that natural variations in maternal behavior shape the development of stress reactivity and social behavior in offspring. Rodent models have also revealed the "hidden" regulatory functions of specific dimensions of maternal behavior. Here we present research that has extended rodent models of early care to the study of biobehavio...

Twenty-five newborn infants were tested for auditory-oral matching behavior when presented with the consonant sound /m/ and the vowel sound /a/ - a precursor behavior to vocal imitation. Auditory-oral matching behavior by the infant was operationally defined as showing the mouth movement appropriate for producing the model sound just heard (mouth opening for /a/ and mouth clutching for /m/), ev...

affect and infant memory. In C. Rovee-Collier & L. P. Lipsitt (Eds.), Advances in infancy research (Vol. 8, pp. 169-216). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Gewirtz, J. L., & Pelaez-Nogueras, M. (1992). B. F. Skinner's legacy to human infant behavior and development. American Psychologist, 47,1411-1422. Rovee-Collier, C. K., & Lipsitt, L. P. (1982). Learning, adaptation, and memory in the newborn. In P. Strat...

Positive experiences with the introduction of solid food in infancy may lead to positive associations feeding both parent and infant. During this transitional period, parental behavior infant eating might mutually reinforce each other. A style that is found be associated child behavior, sensitive feeding. In present study we tested bidirectional prospective relations between mother a cross-lagg...

The ability of a preterm infant to make the transition from gavage to oral nipple feeding depends on the infant’s neurodevelopment in relation to behavioral organization, to a rhythmic suck-swallow-breathe pattern, and to cardiorespiratory regulation. Research-based knowledge about infant neurodevelopment in these three areas has led to the creation of a semidemand feeding method to aid in this...

backgroundalthough exclusive breastfeeding (ebf) is highly emphasized by the experts, nulliparous women do not adhere to this behavior at a desirable level. since it seems that mothers’ beliefs and values play an important role in their adherence to these behaviors, the present study, aimed to perform a careful analysis of the behavior and evaluation of factors associated with the ebf in nullip...

background & aim: skin-to-skin contact immediately after birth plays a pivotal role in proper breastfeeding and mother-infant interaction. despite numerous benefits of mother-infant skin-to-skin contact, this health behavior is not performed by many midwives. this study aimed to evaluate the influential factors for mother-infant skin-to-skin contact based on the precede-proceed model from the p...

The capacity of the human infant to reproduce vocal sounds and to imitate social behavior as early as nine weeks of age has not been described in the literature. Valentine (1942) noted a "talking back" stage at two months in his own children, but did not describe it or outline its development. Lewis (1951) states that "when a three-month-old infant hears a sound drawn from his own repertory, hi...