Assessing the impact of a family nurse-led intervention on young mothers’ references to internal states

A mother's propensity to refer to internal states during mother–child interactions is important for her child's developing social understanding. However, adolescent mothers are less likely to reference internal states when interacting with their children. We investigated whether young mothers’ references to internal states are promoted by the Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) intervention, an intensive home-visiting programme designed to support adolescent mothers in England. We also investigated family, maternal, and child factors associated with young mothers’ references to inner states during interactions with their children. Adolescent mothers (n = 483, aged ≤ 19 years when recruited in pregnancy) and their children participated in an observational substudy of a randomized controlled trial investigating the impact of FNP compared to usual care. Mother–child dyads were video-recorded during free play, and mothers’ speech was coded for use of internal state language (references to cognitions, desires, emotions, intentions, preferences, physiology, and perception). We found no differences in mothers’ use of internal state language between the FNP and usual care groups. A sample-wide investigation identified that other features of mothers’ language and relationship status with the child's father were associated with internal state language use. Findings are discussed with reference to targeted interventions and implications for future research.     

A categorical approach to infants’ individual differences during the Still-Face paradigm

Cluster analysis was used to create patterns of individual differences reflecting infant behaviors during the initial interaction episode of the Face-to-Face Still-Face (FFSF) paradigm. The clusters were used as the basic unit of analysis for studying infant and maternal behavior and dyadic coordination (i.e., matching and reparation) across FFSF. Seventy-five 4-month-old infants participated with their mothers. Cluster analysis identified three patterns: a Socially Engaged cluster (33%) exhibited high levels of social engagement with their mothers; a Disengaged cluster (60%) showed a tendency to be low in social interaction and a Negatively Engaged cluster (7%) showed high negative emotionality. During the Still-Face episode, the Socially Engaged cluster reacted by reducing focus on their mother and shifting their attention elsewhere, while infants in the Disengaged cluster reduced focus on the environment. Although both the Socially Engaged and Disengaged clusters increased in negative emotionality during the Still-Face, the Socially Engaged group largely recovered during the Reunion, whereas the Disengaged group displayed more negative emotion. The Negatively Engaged cluster demonstrated high levels of negative affect throughout the entire procedure. Mothers of Negatively Engaged infants showed less positive engagement and more social monitoring than mothers in other clusters during all episodes. Dyadic interaction differed between groups, with greater levels of matching and reparations in the engaged group, less in the Disengaged group, and very little coordination in the Negatively Engaged cluster. Findings highlight the role of distinctive patterns of infants’ individual differences in determining early dyadic functioning.     

Children of divorce in a Scandinavian welfare state: Are they less affected than US children?

A fairly common view holds that children's risks of negative outcomes associated with family dissolution are generally small or even nonexistent in Scandinavia, and clearly smaller than what is usually found in the United States. This view was empirically examined in a recent large-scale study of 4,127 12–15-year-old children in Norway, of whom 623 had experienced parental divorce and lived in a single-mother family. The somewhat paradoxical pattern of findings was as follows: (a) The negative associations between parental divorce and various outcomes were found to be generally very similar in Norway and the United States in spite of the great differences in family policy and welfare benefits for single mothers (at the macro level); and (b) Mediational effects of family economic resources were in both countries most marked for the academic achievement area, and the predictive power of such variables was quite similar, again in spite of the great differences in absolute level of the economic resources available to single-mother families in the two countries. The results cast some doubt on the value of the absolute economic deprivation perspective in explaining the results, and the many Norwegian welfare benefits do not seem to mitigate the association between divorce and negative outcomes for the children involved. Also policy implications derived from the economic deprivation perspective are questioned. Alternative interpretations of the findings involving relative deprivation and economic resources as a partial proxy for other non-economic factors are briefly discussed.     

Order of Attainment of the Mental Structures for Five of Piaget's Logical,Infralogical, and Formal Tasks

This study explored the relationship between illegitimate birth and cognitive development among 513 boys on probation. Prior research has shown that being part of a single-parent household leads to diminished verbal capacities and often puts a child in greater danger of abuse and neglect. Frequent abuse is thought to lead to the enhancement of visual and spatial skills relative to verbal skills through a process of “frozen watchfulness”. I hypothesized that illegitimate boys from one-parent homes would have greater verbal-performance discrepancy scores than would boys from other combinations of birth status and family structure. These boys had the lowest verbal IQ and highest performance IQ scores and, hence, the largest discrepancy. These boys also suffered the highest degree of abuse and neglect of all four birth status/family structure combinations studied.     

Measurement variability in infant and maternal behavioral assessment

Evaluations of methodological assessments sometimes show similar, sometimes different patterns of findings reflective of different approaches to the same problem. In this study, frequencies of behaviors of infants and mothers in two cultures based on continuous coding were compared with frequencies based on time-sampling, and resulting patterns of findings were evaluated. Time-sampling and continuous coding give different estimates of absolute frequency of typical infant and maternal behaviors between individuals and between cultural groups. However, time-sampling adequately preserves the relative ranking of infant and mother behaviors among individuals and between cultural groups. If research is concerned with the relative standing of individuals and/or groups on frequency of infant or maternal behavior, then (under specified circumstances) time-sampling and continuous coding yield comparable results.     

Maternal mind-mindedness: stability over time and consistency across relationships

Maternal mind-mindedness has been described both as a cognitive-behavioural trait and as a relational construct. This study assessed stability over time and consistency across relationships of maternal mind-mindedness in relation to preschool and primary school siblings and compared representational and interactional mind-mindedness. Mothers with two children between 2½ and 10 years were assessed twice, nine months apart (N = 32 at Time 1; N = 30 at Time 2). Representational mind-mindedness for a partner/friend was also assessed twice. Mothers’ representational mind-mindedness showed temporal stability but was inconsistent across relationships with two children and a partner/friend. Conversely, mothers’ interactional mind-mindedness was stable and highly consistent across relationships with two children. This supports the possibility that mothers’ interactional mind-mindedness is trait-like, while findings are equivocal for representational mind-mindedness. Representational mind-mindedness and interactional mind-mindedness were unrelated in this preliminary study, suggesting that these measures of maternal mind-mindedness were not equivalent for this age group.     

Momentum in Child Compliance and Opposition

Several event-dependent properties of child-mother interactions were studied to investigate momentum in child oppositional and compliant behavior. It was hypothesized that: (a) compared to an episode of child opposition, an episode of child compliance would be related to an increased likelihood of subsequent child compliance, and (b) the association between a target episode of child opposition and the likelihood of subsequent compliance or opposition would be mediated by the history of the dyadic interaction. These hypotheses were supported. In addition, the presence of interactional sequences predictive of child compliance was inversely related to mother dysphoria and unrelated to mother-reported child externalizing behavior disorder symptoms. Discussion focuses on antecedent interactional patterns as determinants of future child behavior.