The Relationship Between Mother 's Personality And Sensitivity And Attentive Behavior

Joint attention is an essential element of social interaction. Throughout our lives, joint attention is the basic process include in learning and communicating with others. Joint attention has been studied in the population of infants and children with developmental disorders. Joint attention typically occurs within the context of parent-child interactions. Previous studies suggested that infants were much more likely to coordinate attention when playing with mothers than with peers, and the mother’s affect might influence joint attention measures. Since the age of14months was regarded as a time point when response to an initiation of joint attention had fully developed, the current study will explore whether mother’s affect-related personalities and maternal sensitivity would influence joint attention at the age of14months. Two paradigms were used to measure joint attention of the14months children, including tester-child interaction paradigm and mother-child interaction paradigm..The study collects the big five personality mother and mother-sensitive data. The results showed that:1. Maternal neuroticism correlated significantly with total time of joint attention episodes in mother-toddler interaction in negative direction, and maternal agreeableness correlated signifinantly with that in positive direction.2. Maternal openness significantly predicted behaviour frequency of lower level initiating joint attention, and maternal agreeableness significantly predicted behaviour frequency of higher level initiating joint attention at age of14months.3. Maternal agreeableness significantly predicted14-month-old toddler’s initiating joint attention pointing behaviour frequency。4. Sensitivity attention, sensitivity reaction force, sensitivity rejected, sensitivity to interference control, physical contact sensitivity and sensitivity participation were associated with reactivity of Joint Attention in negative direction. Initiating behavioural request was negatively correlated with sensitivity reaction force, sensitivity refused and sensitivity participation.