Stabilization And Changes In Maternal Sensitivity During 6-14 Months Of Babies

Maternal sensitivity is one of the most important indexes of parenting quality in infancy. It refers to (1) sensitive to various signals of child and response them promptly and appropriately,(2) cooperative with baby's ongoing behavior not interfere it,(3) physical and psychological available to child not ignore or neglect, and (4) accept baby's needs not reject. The relationships between maternal sensitivity and many child developmental outcomes are significant. Recently, more and more researchers focus on the stability and change of maternal sensitivity, including the rules and predictors of stability and change, and its relationship to children's outcomes. In order to describe the tendency of stability and change in maternal sensitivity accurately, this study visited64families for three times when their children were6month,9month and14month. Using maternal behavior Q sort to coding mother-infant interaction and measure the maternal sensitivity at every time point. Besides, the infants'temperament was reported by their mothers when they were6month. In sum, the findings of this study are:(1)The differential continuity of maternal sensitivity of is quite low, which is indicated by the correlations of global maternal sensitivity in3times and the correlations of9dimensions of maternal sensitivity in3times.(2)The correlations of maternal behavior Q patterns in3times indicate that most mothers'ipsative continuity of maternal sensitivity are quite high, but there are significant individual difference.(3)The results of repeated measures ANOVA indicate that, from6month to14month, the mean score of global maternal sensitivity trends to increase, the difference between baby was9month and14month is significant; In9dimensions of maternal sensitivity, awareness, effective response, interactive synchrony tends to increase; rejection, control or interference trends to decrease; positive affect, comfort of body contact and engagement seems to increase and then decline; the trends of supporting explore and learn is declining and then increasing.(4)The result of HLM finds that there are significant individual differences in the change of global maternal sensitivity, positive affect, interactive synchrony, rejection and the comfort of body contact; however, the style of children's temperament is not the source of variation.