INFANT BEHAVIOR AND DEVELOPMENT 20 (3), 1997,
Copyright @ 1997 ABLEXPublishing Corpomtion
pp. 283-296
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Maternal Responsiveness and Infant Mental Abilities:
Specific Predictive Relations
MARC H. BORNSTEIN
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
CATHERINE
S. TAMIS-LEMONDA
New York University
Specific predictive relations between mothers’ responsiveness to their 5-month-olds’ nondistress
activities and vocal distress and infants’ attention span, symbolic play, and language comprehension at 13 months were examined in 36 dyads in a short-term prospective longitudinal study.
Maternal responsiveness to infant nondistress activities at 5 months, but not responsiveness to
infant distress, uniquely predicted infant attention span and symbolic play, but not infant language
comprehension.
Mothers’ responsiveness at 13 months was positively and consistently, but not
significantly, associated with all three infant abilities. The results support a view that the effects of
maternal responsiveness on infant mental development are specific and indirect rather than generic
and direct and recommend further differentiation of infant activity, maternal responsiveness, and
child outcome in studies of children’s early mental development.
maternal
responsiveness
IanQuaqe
infant activity
comprehension
Sensitive parental responsiveness has been identified as a significant general factor in child
Bowlby
(1969)
and
development
since
Ainsworth (Ainsworth, Bell, & Stayton, 1974;
Ainsworth,
Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978).
Bornstein and Tamis-LeMonda
(1989, p. 50)
operationalized
responsiveness
as “mothers’
prompt, contingent, and appropriate behaviors”
that have identifiable,
immediate, and direct
antecedents in the behaviors of their infants. At
present, a substantial developmental
literature
with
maternal
responsiveness
associates
advances in the socioemotional
and cognitive
domains of child growth (e.g., Beckwith &
Cohen, 1989; Bell & Ainsworth, 1972; Bomstein, 1989a, 1995; Bradley, 1989; Coates &
Lewis, 1984; Crockenberg, 1981, 1983; Fish &
Crockenberg, 198 1; Goldberg, Lojkasek, Gartner, & Corter, 1989; Hardy-Brown, Plomin, &
DeFries, 1981; Isabella, 1993; Lewis, 1993;
Lewis & Goldberg, 1969; Olson, Bates, & Bayles, 1984; Rheingold, Gewirtz, & Ross, 1959;
Sigman, Neumann, Carter, Cattle, D’Souza, &
Direct all correspondence to: Dr. Marc H. Bomstein, Child
and Family Research, Laboratory of Comparative Ethology,
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development,
National Institutes of Health, Building 3I-Room
B2B15,
9000 Rockville Pike, Bethesda MD 20892-2030; e-mail:
[email protected].
attention
prediction
symbolic
play
Bwibo, 1988; Yarrow, Rubenstein, & Pedersen,
1975).
Like other interaction processes, responsiveness may influence child development directly
or indirectly. On one view, responsiveness operates directly on the growth of childhood compeLewis and Goldberg
(1969),
for
tencies.
example, argued that, based on consistent and
prompt reinforcement in mother-infant
interactions, infants learn a “generalized expectancy”
that their own behaviors have consequence in
affecting the environment.
In the same vein,
Watson (1985; Watson & Ramey, 1972) proposed that infants learn more than simple associations when their behaviors are responded to:
Infants’ experiences, especially in controlling
contingent stimulation, lead them to develop a
sense of “effectance,” and as they recognize that
they can exert an effect on their environment
infants become increasingly motivated to learn
and to control and interact with that environment. It has also been hypothesized that responsiveness
operates
indirectly
in
child
development:
Responsiveness
experiences
engender feelings of “security” in children, and
more secure children explore the environment
more, leading indirectly to advances in socioemotional and cognitive competencies. Bowlby
and Ainsworth theorized that the mother who is
sensitive, responsive, and emotionally available
283
284
Bornstein and Tamis-LeMonda
to her infant provides a secure base that enables
the infant to separate easily and freely explore
the surroundings
(see also Frodi, Bridges, &
Grolnick, 1985; Sorce & Emde, 198 l), activities
which in turn have been linked to exploration
and advancing cognitive capabilities (e.g., Bell
& Ainsworth,
1972; Jennings, Harmon, Morgan, Gaiter, & Yarrow, 1979; Main, Tomasini,
& Tolan, 1979; Matas, Arend, & Sroufe, 1978).
Whether via direct or indirect pathways,
responsiveness
may have specific or general
implications
for child development.
Responsiveness could operate on infants by promoting
general motivation or effectance, leading to the
prediction that maternal responsiveness
of different kinds exerts a broad influence on multiple
measured outcomes. It could also be, however,
that only certain or specific developing abilities
are affected by specific kinds of responsive
experience.
Thus, directly and/or indirectly
parental responsiveness
may influence general
or specific growth in infancy. Clear longitudinal
demonstrations
of responsiveness
effects are,
however, altogether few. Empirical studies of
the predictive validity of maternal responsiveness have been constrained by one or more significant shortcomings.
For example, maternal
responsiveness
is often confounded with other
relevant behavioral or sociodemographic
variables. In this study, we coded responsiveness
particularly, as distinct from spontaneous stimulation and from contingent but intrusive or unrelated caregiving
activities,
and we also
evaluated
and accounted
for associations
between responsiveness and significant sociodelike education
and
mographic
variables,
employment, in mothers. Additionally, relations
between maternal responsiveness and child performance have often only been assessed at the
same time, so that the interpretation of directional effects is compromised. In this 5- to 13month
prospective
longitudinal
study, we
recorded child activities at two times in infancy,
we evaluated age-appropriate
and comparable
forms of maternal responsiveness to those activities, and we used hierarchical regression techniques
to isolate
unique
predictive
vs.
concurrent effects of responsiveness.
Furthermore, when maternal responsiveness
specifically has been studied, it has often been
conceived of as a global parenting pattern, when
it may be that select forms of responsiveness are
differentially meaningful in predictive validity
(cf. Coates & Lewis, 1984). In this study, we
coded separately
and compared
mothers’
responsiveness
to their children’s positive or
nondistress activities from mothers’ responsiveness to their children’s negative or distress
activities. We partitioned maternal responsiveness into these component types, expecting that
their effects would vary relative to different outcome measures. For example, the conduct of
intelligible
conversation
imposes turn-taking
constraints vis-a-vis nondistress vocalizing suggesting that responsiveness
to certain infant
nondistress activities might encourage language
development;
moreover, positive responsiveness to infant attention orientation is associated
with verbal and cognitive development. Altematively, mothers’ responding to infant distressresponsiveness
to distress is thought to have
evolved an adaptive significance
for eliciting
and maintaining proximity and care--was
not
hypothesized to exert the same positive influences over children’s representational
abilities,
except insofar as responsiveness
in mothers
might generically influence child development.
Bowlby
(1969) posited
that child-mother
attachment derives from maternal responsiveness to infant distress signals; parental regularity
engenders trust and security, on the basis of
which exploration and learning can proceed.
Hence, the differentiation
of mothers’ responsiveness to infant nondistress vs. distress activities speaks to the distinction between direct vs.
indirect effects on general vs. specific abilities.
Our observations of responsiveness began when
infants were 5 months old because at this time
the infant’s scope of apperception has broadened beyond the dyad; infants look to the environment, reach out, and grasp; and infants more
actively engage mother and participate in verbal
and nonverbal turn-taking exchanges (see Belsky, Gilstrap, & Rovine, 1984; Bomstein &
Tamis-LeMonda,
1990; Case, 1985; Cohn &
Tronick, 1987; Kaye & Fogel, 1980; McCall,
Eichorn, & Hogarty, 1977).
In the same vein, the criterion outcomes of
parental responsiveness in childhood have often
been investigated as monistic (cf. Riksen-Walraven, 1978). Yet, different infant cognitive
competencies, such as attention span, symbolic
play, and language comprehension,
may relate
differentially to maternal responsiveness.
The
Maternal Responsiveness and Infant Ability
start of the second year, when children and
mothers were seen again, reflects a period of
advances in diverse mental abilities in the child,
and growth in these three domains of cognition
is particularly notable. Among the main tasks of
this period are the achievement of self-regulatory, symbolic, and communicative
capacities
(Belsky & Most, 1981; Bomstein & O’Reilly,
1993; devilliers & devilliers,
1992; Edwards,
1995; McCune, 1992), and so we focused on
these early second-year achievements. Specifically, in this period children normally make
great strides in coordinating
attention (e.g.,
Bakeman
& Adamson,
1984; Harding
&
Golinkoff, 1979) and in learning to disregard
extraneous
environmental
intrusions
(Kopp,
1987), and sustained attention becomes longer,
more controlled, and more focused (Krakow,
Kopp, & Vaughn, 1981). Children also move
from undifferentiated exploration and functional
manipulation of objects towards more sophisticated acts of pretense (e.g., Belsky 8~ Most,
1981; Fein, 1981; McCall, 1979; O’Connell &
Bretherton, 1984), and symbolic activity begins
to appear in play (Bates, Bretherton, Shore, &
McNew, 1983; Ungerer & Sigman, 1984). Furthermore, children start to understand sound
sequences which function as true “naming”
(e.g., Snyder, Bates, & Bretherton, 1981), and
language comprehension
is shifting from a
or purely
performative
“context-restricted”
understanding of words or phrases to “flexible”
understanding
of words across contexts (Bates,
Bretherton, & Snyder, 1988). Each of these abilities is characterized by considerable individual
variation at this critical time. In this study, we
explored the differential role of different types
of maternal responsiveness in early infancy for
the growth of these three cognitive skills at the
end of infancy.
In brief, the main goals of the present study
were to examine the predictive validity of
maternal responsiveness,
overcoming
several
shortcomings in extant research, and to isolate
early vs. later predictive effects of different
kinds of maternal responsiveness
for different
cognitive competencies in children. (A differentiated pattern of mother-child
predictive relations would suggest that different underlying
processes are at work in responsiveness’s role in
the mental development of the child.) Cognitive
growth turns on the active participation of the
285
child in generating appropriate interactive experiences with significant social others, as well as
responsiveness and stimulation provided by primary social partners. The developmental model
underlying
this investigation
presumed such
transaction (Bornstein & Lamb, 1992; Sameroff, 1983), in that child and significant others,
notably mother, influence the child’s development through time. By isolating different kinds
of responsiveness and their differential temporal
effects on multiple measures of cognitive development all essentially in thefirst year, this study
design also highlights specific effects of specific
types of parental responsiveness per se for specific childhood abilities.
METHODS
Participants
Thirty-six primiparous mothers and their children (14
girls and 22 boys), recruited from private obstetric and pediatric groups in a large metropolitan area, were visited in their
homes twice, first when infants were 5 months old (M =
161.8 days, SD = 8.2) and then at 13 months old (M= 402.9
days, SD = 4.3). At both the 5- and 13-month observations,
mothers completed questionnaires
that supplied demographic information about their children’s health status, their
own educational histories, employment status, and the like.
All infants were term at birth (M weight = 3.4 kg, SD = 0.5;
M length = 50.8 cm, SD = 2.8) and healthy throughout the
course of the study. Families were middle- to upper-socioeconomic status (M = 59.9, SD = 5.4, on the Hollingshead
Four Factor Index of Social Status, 1915; Gottfried, 1985).
Mothers averaged 33.2 years old (SD = 4.0) at the time ofthe
5-month observation and had an average of 6.5 years (SD =
2.3) post-high school education. At 5 months, 64% of mothers were homemakers, and 33% worked part- or mlltime
outside the home; at 13 months, 39% of mothers were homemakers, and 58% worked part- or fulltime outside the home
(data were missing for one mother at each age).
Procedures
Infant activity
and maternal
responsiveness
were
assessed during naturalistic interactions in the home at 5
months. At 13 months, dyads were observed again at home,
and children’s attention span and symbolic play and maternal responsiveness were coded from a videotaped play session. Children’s
language data were obtained from a
maternal inventory. Home observations allowed mothers
and children to be studied in surroundings familiar and comfortable to them. At both ages, mothers were told that the
observer was interested in general dimensions of children’s
development; they were asked to do whatever they ordinarily would do, disregarding the observer’s presence insofar as possible; beside the observer, only mother and child
were present; and all visits were scheduled during times
when children were likely to be in states of quiet or active
286
Bornstein and Tamis-LeMonda
alert. Our purpose was to observe mothers and children
under conditions appropriate to the ages involved, and not to
standardize the contexts of data collection beyond what was
normal and ecologically valid for that situation and age.
Home visits were conducted by different observers at the
two ages to minimize observer knowledge about child and
mother performance at other times; data for each component
of the study were also coded by different individuals, so that
coders were blind to the nature of different data sets.
Data Collection at 5 Months
After a warm-up period, observations lasted 45 min and
were conducted in real time using a sampling technique in
which a 30-s observation was followed by a 30-s recording
period (Seitz, 1988). The bounds of these periods were signaled to the observer by a covert automatic timer. Both
maternal and infant activities were observed and recorded
for analysis. The young infant’s visual and vocal behaviors
serve as principal indicators of state of arousal and affect, as
well as of perceptual, cognitive, and emotional functioning
(Bomstein & Lamb, 1992). These are among the behaviors
which mothers monitor closely. For these reasons, we examined maternal responsiveness to infant visual attention to the
environment and to mother as well as to infant nondistress
and distress vocal signals. Infant activities were constituted
in two categories: (a) nondistress (operationalized as visual
orientation to mother, to a property, object, or event in the
environment, active hand contact with an object, or nondistress vocalization) and (b) distress vocalization. Frequency
counts were obtained for infant activities in terms of the
number of coding intervals in which an activity category
occurred. Behavior codes were independent, that is, any
code could occur in any coding interval. Infant state was also
noted once per 30-s observation; infants were judged to be in
states of quiet or active alert (modified from Brazelton,
1973) in an average of 91% of the sampling intervals.
Mother codes focussed on responsiveness to the two categories of infant activities. Responsiveness to infant nondistress was defined as mothers’
responding
promptly,
contingently, and appropriately in either a physical or verbal
manner within the same 30-s coding interval to the above
infant nondistress (exploration or vocalization) activities.
Responsiveness
met three criteria: (a) the infant acted or
vocalized nondistress, (b) the mother displayed a change in
her own activity subsequent to the infant’s behavior within
the 30-s time frame, and (c) the mother’s response was
infant dependent and appropriate (vs. intrusive or controlling) in the sense that it related conceptually to the infant’s
prior action. For example, a mother would be credited with
responsiveness if her infant looked at an object and she then
named the object, described it, or moved it toward the infant
so that the infant could reach it, in contrast to her nonresponsively but contiguously moving a different object into the
infant’s view or offering unrelated comments (e.g., “Ok,
let’s go have lunch”). We specifically and conservatively
coded responses that elaborated for, rather than distracted,
the infant in these ways. This coding resulted in frequency
counts of responsiveness
to infant nondistress, that is the
number of sampling intervals in which maternal responsiveness occurred.
Responsiveness to infant distress was defined as mothers’ responding promptly, contingently, and appropriately
within the same 30-s period to an infant distress vocalization. Mothers responded to distress predominantly by talking to, soothing, comforting,
stroking and touching, or
picking the infant up; less frequently, mothers attempted distraction strategies of encouraging the infant’s attention to
properties, objects, or events in the immediate surround (see,
too, Bomstein et al., 1992).
Prior to beginning the study, two observers were trained
to a minimum of 90% agreement in each coding category.
During the course of the study, observers were checked for
reliability regularly (over approximately
25% of observations). Observer agreement about infant state and the occurrence or nonoccurrence of infant and mother activities was
examined on an interval-by-interval
basis. Agreement averaged 90% for all infant activities (range = 90%-97%). For
mothers, agreement on responsiveness to nondistress averaged 82% (80%93%)
and responsiveness to distress averaged 94% (80%100%).
Base rates were skewed
constraining the selection of percent agreement as the reliabilitv index.
Two proportion variables for maternal responsiveness
were defined. Maternal responsiveness to infant nondistress
was calculated as the number of intervals in which a mother
responded to her infant’s nondistress activity divided by the
number of intervals in which an infant acted in a nondistress
fashion. Maternal responsiveness to distress was calculated
as the number of intervals in which a mother responded to
her infant’s distress divided by the number of intervals in
which her infant cried or fretted. Thus, the two responsiveness calculations took into consideration base rates of infant
nondistress and distress (see Bomstein et al., 1992).’
Data Collection at 13 Months
Each dyad was videotaped for 15 min during a free
interaction. A standard set of toys (doll, blanket, teapot
cover, two teacups, two saucers, two spoons, a toy
phone, toy train, two small picture books, foam rubber
and a set of nesting barrels) was placed on the floor in
of child and mother.
play
with
teleball,
front
Attention Span
Each child’s visual orienting to the toys was divided into
attention episodes, defined as visual orientation to a target
toy/toy group lasting a minimum of 2 s. The offset of an episode was signaled when the child turned away from the target toy(s) for more than 2 s. The onset and offset of each
episode were noted to the nearest I s based on the prerecorded time signal appearing on the videotapes.
For each child, the mean duration(s) of the two longest
episodes of unintermpted
attention was calculated. This
index represents children’s ability to focus on an object/
object group for prolonged periods and is valid and reliable
(see Power, Chapieski, & McGrath, 1985). Interobserver
reliabilities for attention span were obtained by having three
independent coders score the attention of approximately
20% ofthe sample. Pearson reliabilities (r) calculated for the
time data across attention episodes for each infant averaged
.87 (range = .71-.97); a separate reliability showed good
agreement in absolute level as well as rank order of attention, ICC = .98.
Maternal Responsiveness and Infant Ability
Symbolic Play
Child play was coded from videotapes in accordance
with a mutually exclusive and exhaustive play category system that included 8 levels and a default (no play) category;
these levels were derived from previous research on the progressive nature of play across the first and second years of
life (see Bomstein, Haynes, O’Reilly, & Painter, 1996;
Bomstein & O’Reilly, 1993; Tamis-LeMonda & Bomstein,
1991, 1994): Play levels 1 to 4 consisted of unitary functional, inappropriate combinatorial, and appropriate combinatorial activity as well as transitional play, and play levels
5 to 8 consisted of self-directed, other-directed, sequential,
and substitution pretense. (The toys afforded the child the
opportunity to exhibit all levels of play.) The play session
was divided into 60 contiguous intervals of I5 s each. During a given 15-s interval, each play level that occurred was
credited once, regardless of the number of times it occurred.
All categorizations
of child play, including symbolic play,
were determined by children’s actions and nonverbal behaviors rather than by their language.
The number ofdifferent symbolic play levels (i.e., levels
5 through 8) was calculated within each interval and then
summed across the 60 intervals to compute a total symbolic
play score for each child. Intercoder reliabilities for child
play were obtained by having independent coders score 24%
of the sample, randomly selected. For each child, observers
were said to agree when they both coded the same level(s) of
play for a given interval. Kappa agreement for the eight levels of play across intervals and children averaged .77.
Maternal Responsiveness
Maternal responsiveness was scored from the same videotaped play session. As at 5 months, responsiveness was
coded whenever a mother responded promptly, contingently, and appropriately (not simply contiguously and not
intrusively) to her child’s exploration or vocalization; however, at 13 months, the frequency of responsiveness was
counted. The same definitions and constraints on child
behavior and maternal responsiveness held at 13 months as
at 5 months, except that at 13 months child distress did not
occur, precluding a measure of maternal responsiveness to
distress. Thus, maternal responsiveness to nondistress was
operationalized
similarly at the two ages, to conceptually
matching age-appropriate
exploratory and vocal behaviors.
Two independent Scorers coded 17% of the data in common:
Reliability averaged 82% (range = 73%-91%).
Language Comprehension
Mothers were probed about their children’s receptive
vocabulary using the Earfy Language Interview (ELI; Bates
et al., 1988). This interview yields reliable language data and
possesses concurrent and predictive validity for children’s
language performance. During the language interview, an
experimenter read specific lexical items taken from general
verbal categories (e.g., food) and asked the mother whether
her child understood each item, and if so, whether any specific gestural, vocal, or temporal cues were necessary in
order for her child to display comprehension ofthe item. The
6-week test-retest reliability for a later adaptation ofthe ELI,
the MacArthur Toddler Vocabulary Production Scale (8 1%
of the words in either word list are shared) is .90 (Fenson et
al., 1991). At the time of the interview, children either
played with their own toys or were free to continue playing
287
with the toys the experimenter had provided. Mothers were
free to respond to children’s bids during the interview.
Language data were scored according to procedures
developed by Bates et al. (1988) and by Tamis-LeMonda
and Bomstein (1994). Children were credited with comprehension if their behavioral response was appropriate to a
particular word or phrase (e.g., stopping an action if mother
said “no”). Comprehension of each word or phrase was further categorized as “restricted,” in cases where contextual or
other cues were necessary for mastery of the item, or “flexible,” in cases where comprehension of a word or phrase was
independent of context (Bates et al., 1988). For analysis, we
used the number of flexible words and phrases children
comprehended. This measure is thought to index the extent
to which children actually understand the idea that things
have names (Bates et al., 1988; Snyder et al., 1981; TamisLeMonda & Bomstein, 1994); it is reliable and valid for second-year language (see Bates et al., 1988; Tamis-LeMonda
& Bomstein, 1994); and it was characterized by greater variability than its restricted counterpart, F (max) = 10.05, p <
.OOl. Two coders independently scored audio recordings and
transcripts of 10% of the language interviews. Agreement
for numbers of words and phrases in comprehension
was
calculated by dividing the number of agreements by the
number of agreements plus disagreements. They averaged
97% for comprehension
(83%-98%).
Agreement for the
flexible-restricted
language
distinction
averaged
90%
(83%-98%).
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Prior to statistical appraisal, univariate data
were inspected in box plots, and bivariate relations were examined in scatter plots (Tukey,
1977). (Data for two additional dyads were
omitted from analyses: One child was an outlier
on language, and one on play.) Inspection of
bivariate distributions
showed that pairs of
child, mother, and mother-child activities were
not systematically associated in any nonlinear
fashion. Relations between sociodemographic
variables and all measured variables were also
examined: Neither maternal status (age, education, or employment) nor infant status (gender,
weight at birth, or age at testing) was associated
with any measures of infant activity, child attention span, symbolic play, language comprehension, or maternal responsiveness,
and so these
factors were not considered in further analyses.
As no variables differed between girls and boys,
analyses are based on the entire sample.
Results of this longitudinal research are organized as follows. First, descriptive statistics for
infant activities, child attention span, symbolic
play, language comprehension,
and maternal
responsiveness
at the two ages are presented.
Next, zero-order relations among these variables
are assessed, and multiple hierarchical regres-
Bornstein and Tamis-LeMonda
288
TABLE 1
Child and Mother Activities
Mean
SD
Child at 5 months
Nondistress
Distress
activity (intervals)
(intervals)
34.6
6.7
5.7
4.4
84.0
43.5
Child at 13 months
Attention
span (s)
Symbolic
play (sum of symbolic
Language
comprehension
play levels)
(flexible words)
5.0
5.3
36.5
17.5
0.33
0.15
0.73
0.28
46.9
17.0
Mother
Responsiveness
Nondistress
Distress
at 5 months
(proportion)
(proportion)
Responsiveness
to nondistress
at 13 months
sion analysis used to evaluate the unique predictive validity of maternal responsiveness
at the
two ages to infant and child activities for the
separate cognitive abilities.
Descriptive Statistics and Relations
Among Variables
Descriptive
Statistics
Means and standard deviations for all variables assessed appear in Table 1. At 5 months,
infants were active (they explored visually or
tactually or vocalized) in more than 75% of sampling intervals on average. Some infants were
active in as few as 33% of intervals, others in as
many as 95%. Infants vocalized distress in less
than 13% of coding intervals on average (range
= 0 to 16). At 13 months, children’s average
longest attention epoch lasted about 1.5 min.
Some children maintained focus on a toy/toy
group for less than 0.5 min, whereas others
attended for nearly 3.5 min at a stretch. Differences in procedures, stimulus materials, and
length of observation make it difficult to compare group trends in attention across studies, but
the fact that individual children vary in attention
is in agreement with prior research (e.g., Jennings et al., 1979; Power et al., 1985; Yarrow et
al., 1982). Children varied on how sophisticated
their ongoing symbolic play was, with some
children never exhibiting symbolic play and others playing symbolically
in as many as l/3 of
sampling intervals. These play data parallel
extant studies on spontaneous play in toddlerhood (e.g., Belsky 8~ Most, 1981; Bomstein et
al., 1996; Vibbert & Bomstein, 1989). Children
comprehended an average of 36 flexible words
(10-75). These findings are consistent with general results obtained by Benedict (1979) and
specific results of Bates et al. (1988) on a sample of 13-month-olds
for the same language
inventory.
At 5 months, mothers responded to infants’
nondistress activities in approximately 33% of
the sampling intervals on average, and they
responded to infants’ distress vocalizations
in
nearly 75%. This rate of responsiveness to infant
nondistress approximately matches that reported
by Bomstein et al. (1992) for a separate sample
of American mothers. Moss and Robson (1968,
cited in Wachs & Gruen, 1982) reported that
77% of 2,000 episodes of infant crying resulted
in maternal interventions,
and Stith and Davis
(1984) reported rates of contingent responsiveness to infant distress among mothers at 72%74%. The range of distress responsiveness
betrayed wide individual variation among mothers: Some mothers were responsive in only 2%
of intervals, whereas others were responsive in
nearly 75%. However, the distribution
was
skewed with the majority of mothers clustered
around consistent
responsiveness.
Bell and
Ainsworth (1972) likewise reported a range of
individual variation in maternal responsiveness
to infant crying during the first 3 months of life;
the least responsive mother ignored her infant
Maternal Responsiveness and Infant Ability
97% of time; the most responsive failed to
respond to her infant only 4% of the time. At 13
months, mothers responded nearly 47 times in
15 min (19-90).
Relarions Among Van’ables
The two kinds of maternal responsiveness at
5 months were correlated, r = .33, p = .05, but
shared only 10% of variance. Child attention
span related significantly to symbolic play competence, r = .48, p C .Ol, but attention did not
relate to language comprehension,
r = .17; and
play related marginally, but not significantly, to
language, r = .28. In general, these associations
are consistent with others reported in the literature (e.g., Bates et al., 1988; Jennings et al.,
1979; Power et al., 1985; Ungerer & Sigman,
1984; Vibbert & Bornstein, 1989; Yarrow et al.,
1984). The three criterion measures shared only
3%-23% of variance. On the basis of these analyses, the two forms of maternal responsiveness
and the three criterion measures were examined
in separate predictive analyses.
Predictive
Relations
We used correlation and hierarchical multiple
regression analysis to identify the predictive
validity of maternal responsiveness
to distress
and nondistress in infancy to each of the three
child cognitive competencies
at 13 months.
Table 2 refers to maternal responsiveness
to
infant nondistress. Row A provides evidence for
289
the unique concurrent
association
between
maternal responsiveness at 13 months and that
criterion child ability at 13 months (i.e., with
maternal responsiveness at 5 months partialled).
Row B provides evidence for the unique predictive association between maternal responsiveness at 5 months and the same child ability at 13
months (i.e., with maternal responsiveness at 13
months partialled). Maternal responsiveness
to
infant nondistress
activities
at 5 months
uniquely predicted child attention span and symbolic play, accounting for approximately 15% of
unique variance on average. The same patterns
of results obtained for total maternal responsiveness at 5 months (the sum of the z-transformations of mothers’ proportions of responsiveness
to infant nondistress activities and to infant distress vocalizations) as for maternal responsiveness to infant nondistress;
it appears that
maternal responsiveness
to infant nondistress
carries the effects for total maternal responsiveness. Although consistently and positively assomaternal
responsiveness
to child
ciated,
nondistress activities at 13 months was never a
unique predictor of attention span, symbolic
play, or language comprehension.
Maternal
responsiveness
to infant distress at 5 months
(uncorrected for distress responsiveness
at 13
months because no episodes of distress occurred
then) never predicted a child outcome: rs = .21
to attention span, .24 to symbolic play, and -.04
to language comprehension,
ns. Furthermore,
TABLE 2
Child Cognitive Skills: Attention Span, Symbolic Play, and language Comprehension
Predicted by Maternal Responsiveness to Infant Nondistress
Predictive
Zero-order
Correlation
Criterion/Predictors
Attention Span
R2
R2 change
F change
as
Model f
4.43”
21%
A. Maternal
responsiveness
13 mo.
.22
.03
1.29
6. Maternal
responsiveness
5 mo.
.43.*
.16
6.79’*
l
Symbolic
2.73’
14%
Play
A. Maternal
responsiveness
13 mo.
.25
.05
1.79
B. Maternal
responsiveness
5 mo.
.44’f
.OB
3.08’
Language
1.52
8%
Comprehension
A. Maternal
responsiveness
13 mo.
.25
.05
1.92
B. Maternal
responsiveness
5 mo.
.17
.02
.80
Note.
*p < .05; “p
< .Ol
290
Bornstein and Tamis-LeMonda
language comprehension was never a significant
criterion. Mothers’ education related to their
total responsiveness,
Y = .33, p < .OS, as
expected (Goldberg et al., 1989); however, the
same patterns of results, in terms of magnitude
and significance levels, obtained when maternal
education was entered first into separate followup regression analyses, and so maternal responsiveness per se mattered to outcome over and
above education.
CONCLUSIONS
This study was designed to assess the predictive
validity of two kinds of maternal responsiveness
in early infancy-responsiveness
to nondistress
and distress at 5 months-for
multiple domains
of infants’ later cognitive development-attention span, symbolic play, and language comprehension at 13 months. A higher level of maternal
responsiveness
in total did not predict higher
child ability in all areas. Instead, individual variation in certain child abilities reflected individual variation
in mothers’ responsiveness
to
certain infant activities. The predictive findings
demonstrated a clear effect of maternal responsiveness to infants’ nondistress activities, but
not distress, for the development of infant attention span and symbolic play. These findings lead
to a differentiated perspective on the ways particular parenting experiences might foster specific abilities in young children (Bomstein,
1995). Although the overall effect sizes were
modest, the findings are noteworthy because
specific
predictive
relations
obtained
over
developmental
discontinuities
that characterize
infancy (see Emde, Gaensbauer,
& Harmon,
1976; Fischer, 1980). Certainly responsiveness
is embedded in an on-going complex of caregiver social (e.g., Bell & Ainsworth, 1972; Bradley, Caldwell, & Elardo, 1979; Coates &
Lewis, 1984; Lewis & Goldberg, 1969) and
didactic activities (e.g., Bomstein, 1989b; Riksen-Walraven,
1978), which are themselves
growth fostering. However, responsiveness
in
mothers predicted variation in child cognitive
abilities independent
of maternal education;
Crockenberg (1983), too, found that maternal
responsiveness (as measured by self-report) at 3
months predicted the Bayley Mental Development Index at 21 months even when maternal
education was partialled. These findings confirm that relations among specific types of
maternal responsiveness and specific childhood
competencies
reflect factors associated with
parenting activities per se, and are not solely
mediated by whatever contemporaneous
general
environmental
stimulation mothers may offer.
As isolated here, maternal responsiveness
to
infant nondistress
activities
accounted
for
advances in specific domains of child cognition.
Before discussing key facets of the results,
we note that the families in this study were relatively restricted in terms of socioeconomic and
educational
status, and different patterns of
results could emerge in mothers (and conceivably in infants) drawn from other socioeconomic groups. Nonetheless, infancy represents a
generally
crucial period of adjustment
for
mother and infant (e.g., Bomstein, 1995; Bomstein & Lamb, 1992); the behaviors observed
were representative of common mother-infant
interactions; and mothers and children were also
observed at optimal times providing for optimal
assessments of dyadic interaction. Moreover,
neither maternal nor infant activities related to
SES or employment
status, and mothers and
infants alike showed considerable variation in
their activities.
Our findings raise three questions that may
advance thinking about responsiveness
and its
differential effects. Why does maternal responsiveness to infant nondistress activities specifically predict attention span and symbolic play
competence? Attention and symbolic play covaried. The two might both reflect exploratory
competence or mastery motivation which itself
underlies their predicted common variance (e.g.,
Hmcir, Speller, & West, 198.5; Yarrow et al.,
1982). Children’s motivation to master their
environments is believed to result in longer periods of object exploration (attention) and therecompetence
in
ongoing
fore
increased
(symbolic) play (Jennings et al., 1979; Yarrow,
McQuiston,
MacTurk,
McCarthy,
Klein, &
Vietze, 1983; Yarrow et al., 1982). Furthermore,
it has been shown that play activity that continues over time (longer attention duration) is more
likely to result in consolidation of information
about play objects (Jennings et al., 1979). It is
well established that mothers help to shape the
patterns which infant and child attention sometimes follow (e.g., Bomstein & Tamis, 1990;
Ruff & Rothbart, 1996) so that attentional processes, which are in force at both ages, could
Maternal Responsiveness and Infant Ability
carry their part of the shared variate. Specifically, responsiveness of environmental stimulation has been shown to influence selective
attention and persistence, which reflect a motivation to learn about or master one’s surroundings (Yarrow et al., 1982). Of course, mothers
were present and engaged with their children
during the 13-month assessment, and children
have been shown to act in more and higher levels of symbolic play when in the presence of
their mothers (e.g., Bomstein
et al., 1996;
O’Connell & Bretherton, 1984; Slade, 1987). It
could be, therefore, that mothers who are
responsive to their infants’ nondistress behaviors also facilitate sophisticated play. Children
engage in higher levels of exploration and play
as a reflection of perceived maternal emotional
availability, not mere physical availability; that
is, mother must interact to exert an effect on
child play (Sorce & Emde, 198 1).
Relatedly, why does maternal responsiveness
to infant nondistress not predict language competence? Bates, Benigni, Bretherton, Camaioni,
and Volterra (1979) referred to the onset of communicative intentions and conventional signaling as the “First Moment” in language which
does not occur until approximately 9-l 0 months
old. At this time, infants show increased receptiveness to the communicative
intent of others
and intentionality of their own communications.
This suggests that infants younger than 9
months may not recognize such conventional
aspects of communication,
a realization that is
important to further gains in understanding (as
well as producing) mature language. Recently,
Baumwell,
Tamis-LeMonda,
and Bomstein
(1997) found that mothers’ verbal responsiveness to their 9-month-olds indeed predicted children’s language comprehension
at 13 months
(see also Ho, 1987).
Together, these differential predictive associations could also be explained by assuming that
maternal responsiveness
in the first year exerts
effects on attachment security that positively
influence
aspects of exploration,
including
attention and sophistication
in play, but that
secure base effects do not necessarily (or yet)
generalize to language. The attention and play
measures also both derived from the play observation, whereas the language measure derived
from an interview;
it could be that shared
method variance helps to explain the differential
291
prediction of attention and play vs. language.
This methodological
explanation
loses force,
however, because mothers contributed responsiveness data and also provided the data on their
children’s language;
if anything,
then, one
would expect shared source variance to contribute to covariation between responsiveness
and
children’s language scores.
Finally, why does maternal responsiveness to
infant nondistress, but not to infant distress,
affect children’s cognitive growth? Mothers in
this study produced a limited range of responsiveness to distress, indeed they responded very
frequently. Given its theoretical significance
(Bowlby, 1969), then, in the absence of longer
observation times in more diverse samples, the
potential influences of responsiveness
to distress should not be dismissed. The question of
effects of maternal responsiveness to infant nondistress, however, returns us to arguments concerned with direct vs. indirect effects of
responsiveness. The observed differential effectiveness of the two responsiveness
types at 5
months to different outcomes at 13 months tends
to support “specificity” relations in the predictive validity of maternal
interaction
styles
(Bomstein, 1989b, 1995; Bomstein & TamisLeMonda, 1990; Wachs & Gruen, 1982). These
data appear to modify the view that responsiveness constitutes a generalized learning mechanism for infants. Instead, a specific type of
responsiveness predicted specific child abilities.
If maternal responsiveness generically mattered,
then the nondistress-distress
distinction would
presumably not be critical, and responsiveness
would directly inculcate feelings of generalized
expectancy
or self-efficacy
and control in
infants that would contribute to generic competencies (Lewis & Goldberg,
1969; Watson,
1985), promote self-regulation
or motivation
and persistence in children to facilitate attention
and learning (Sigman, Cohen, Beckwith, &
Topinka, 1987; Spangler, Schieche, Ilg, Maier,
& Ackermann, 1994), or strengthen children’s
sense of security and so facilitate acquisition of
information
and success at problem solving
(Matas et al., 1978). But, responsiveness
to
infant distress appeared not as effective at promoting cognition as responsiveness
to infant
nondistress.
Descriptively, infants vocalized, looked, or
touched on average in nearly four-fifths of sam-
292
Bornstein
and Tamis-LeMonda
pled observation periods, providing their mothers more than ample opportunity
to be
responsive.
At less than one-third a rate of
responsiveness
on average, however, mothers’
responsiveness
to infant nondistress activities
was circumscribed.
Mothers in this sample
were, by contrast, uniformly and highly responsive to infant distress. It could be that high levels
of responsiveness to distress (a presumed foundation of mother-child
security) constitute a
gate that permits the function and effectiveness
of responding to infant nondistress. It could also
be that responsiveness
covaries with maternal
characteristics:
Responsive mothers might be
those who are more knowledgeable about child
development or more sensitive to the developmental needs of their infants (responsiveness at
13 months was consistently and positively associated with 13-month child measures) (e.g., Pederson, Moran, Sitko, Campbell, Ghesquire, &
Acton, 1990). Responsiveness is also associated
with dyadic constructs
like attunement
and
intersubjectivity
(e.g., Stern, 1985; Trevarthen
& Hubley, 1978): Responsive mothers might be
more aware of their infant’s perspective and
those mother-infant
dyads more in tune with
one another. Nondistress responsiveness
as a
dyadic construct could also provide caregivers
and children with opportunities to learn about
one another in cognitive promoting situations
and thereby foster child mental development--in
adults to structure experiences to enhance their
informativeness,
and in infants to learn. Of
course, maternal responsiveness
to infant distress presumably has its own consequences for
children, some of which are noncognitive (e.g.,
Beckwith, Cohen, Kopp, Parmelee, & Marcy,
1976; Bell & Ainsworth, 1972).
Further disambiguating these different possible pathways of effects presents a challenge to
future research. As noted, the lack of an association between maternal responsiveness and language comprehension may reflect an age effect,
or a limitation in not differentiating
verbal VS.
nonverbal nondistress activities in the infant and
verbal vs. nonverbal responses on the part of the
mother. The development of language comprehension in the child may specifically turn on
mother-infant
verbal exchanges, and analyses
designed to assess these more specific relations
are warranted (see Baumwell et al., 1997). This
study
also divided
maternal
reactiveness
between responsiveness to nondistress and distress actions on the part of the infant. The division of maternal responsiveness into even finer
gradations (degree of appropriateness,
magnitude of response, and so forth), modalities
(touching, vocalizing, looking, and so forth), as
well as functions (stimulating, caregiving, and
so forth) may prove useful (e.g., Bomstein et al.,
1992). Finally, the timing of mothers’ responsiveness to infants’ provoking behaviors could
be critical. How does it matter between mothers’
responding while their infants are still engaged
in vocalizing or looking vs. waiting until their
infants pause or have completed an action? We
are at present pursuing these refinements in the
infant and responsiveness on the part of mother
in new cohorts.
The findings reported here support a multivariate and transactional view of specificity in
mother-infant
interactions
across the second
half-year of the infant’s life. Theoreticians and
researchers have long believed that the child’s
earliest interactive
experiences
affect later
development, and the importance and pervasiveness of infant effects on caregivers are generally
recognized, but not as well articulated. This
study argues that specifying
infant activity,
maternal responsiveness,
and child effect will
lead to a greater understanding of the dynamics
of early childhood socioemotional
and mental
growth.
Authors’ Notes
This research
was supported
by grants
(HD20559) and (HD20807) and by a Research
Career Development Award (HD00521) from
the National Institute of Child Health and
Human Development to M.H.B. We thank K.
Dine, J. Genevro, 0. M. Haynes, A. Herron, B.
Wright, and M. Zamor for comments and assistance.
Footnote
1.
A separate sample of mothers of 5-montholds (n = 10) was observed twice, one week
apart, for purposes of measuring short-term
of
responsiveness.
Mothers
stability
showed significant stability of responsiveness to infant nondistress, r = .54, p = .05.
Most mothers were uniformly responsive to
Maternal Rerponriven less and Infant Ability
their infants’ distress, however, precluding
an assessment of short-term stability.
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