Maternal sensitivity
Maternal sensitivity is a mother's ability to perceive and infer the meaning behind her infant's behavioural signals, and to respond to them promptly and appropriately. Maternal sensitivity affects child development at all stages through life, from infancy, all the way to adulthood. In general, more sensitive mothers have healthier, more socially and cognitively developed children than those who are not as sensitive. Also, maternal sensitivity has been found to affect the person psychologically even as an adult. Adults who experienced high maternal sensitivity during their childhood were found to be more secure than those who experienced less sensitive mothers. Once the adult becomes a parent themselves, their own understanding of maternal sensitivity will affect their own children's development. Some research suggests that adult mothers display more maternal sensitivity than adolescent mothers who may in turn have children with a lower IQ and reading level than children of adult mothers.
There are different ways of assessing maternal sensitivity, such as through the use of naturalistic observation, the Strange Situation, maternal-synchrony, and maternal mind-mindedness. There are also a number of ways of measuring maternal sensitivity in the scientific world, which include Ainsworth's Maternal Sensitivity Scale, the Maternal Behaviour Q-sort, and the Pederson and Moran Sensitivity Q-Sort.
Description
Maternal sensitivity was first defined by Mary Ainsworth as "a mother's ability to perceive and interpret accurately her infant's signals and communications and then respond appropriately". It was later revised by Karl and Broom in 1995 as "a mother's ability to recognize infant cues consistently and act on those cues, and the ability to monitor and accurately interpret infant cues, as evidenced by mother–child interactions that are contingent, reciprocal and affectively positive". It can be generally defined as a broad concept combining a variety of behavioral care giving attributes.The research on maternal sensitivity follows earlier work in psychoanalytics and is especially rooted in attachment theory. As the focus of psychoanalytics shifted from individuals to children, research studies on mother–infant dyads, on the effects of early childhood on development, and on pregnancy became wider. A psychologist named John Bowlby eventually developed the attachment theory in 1969. Mary Ainsworth, who worked with Bowlby, along with her colleagues created the concept of maternal sensitivity in 1978 in order to describe early mother–infant interaction observed in her empirical studies.
There are four important aspects of maternal sensitivity: dynamic process involving maternal abilities, reciprocal give-and-take with the infant, contingency on the infant's behavior, and quality of maternal behaviors.
Maternal sensitivity is dynamic, elastic and can change over time. A sensitive mother needs to be able to perceive the cues and signals her baby gives her, interpret them correctly and act appropriately. The three most positive affecting factors for the baby are a mother's social support, maternal–fetal attachment and high self-esteem. The three most negative affecting factors are maternal depression, maternal stress, and maternal anxiety. Recent studies have shown that maternal posttraumatic stress disorder can negatively impact a mother's sensitivity during stressful moments with her child that serve as traumatic reminders and that this quite likely has a neural basis in the maternal brain.
Assessment
Naturalistic observation
Maternal sensitivity is most commonly assessed during naturalistic observation of free play interactions between mother and child. There are several factors surrounding assessment during observation that may cause differences in results, including the setting, the context, the length of observation and the frequency of observation. While some observational studies focus strictly on the relationship between mother and child during close interaction such as feeding or free play, other studies look into how well the maternal figure divides her attention between the baby and other everyday activities. The latter was demonstrated in an experiment conducted by Atkinson et al. where mothers were given a questionnaire to act as a "distractor task", and were assessed on their ability to effectively divide their attention between the "distractor task" and their child. In regards to length of observation, some studies require no more than a one-time 10-minute assessment, while other studies used a much lengthier time.Strange Situation
The Strange Situation was developed by Mary Ainsworth in the 1970s to assess attachment relationships between caregivers and children between 9 and 18 months old. Because maternal sensitivity is an indicator of attachment relationship, researchers sometimes use the Strange Situation to observe attachment so that they may use the results to predict and infer the level of maternal sensitivity.In the Strange Situation, the toddler's behavior and stress is observed during a 21-minute free-play session through a one-way glass window as the caregiver and strangers come into and leave the room. The specific sequence of events is as follows:
- The mother and child are alone. Observation of the use of the mother as a secure base, who fosters exploratory behavior and independence.
- A stranger enters the room, which shows the effects of stranger anxiety.
- The mother leaves the child, which shows the effects of separation anxiety. The stranger tries to comfort the child, which tests the effects of stranger anxiety.
- The mother returns and the stranger leaves. Observation of reunion behavior.
- The parent leaves and the child once more; separation anxiety is tested for.
- The stranger returns and tries to comfort the infant; stranger anxiety is tested for.
- The parent returns and the stranger leaves. Once more, observation of reunion behavior.
Mother–infant synchrony and maternal mind-mindedness
Two related qualitative concepts that are correlated with maternal sensitivity are mother–infant synchrony and maternal mind-mindedness.In mother–infant synchrony, the mother and infant's ability to change their own behaviour based on the other's response is taken into consideration. Infant affect and maternal stimulation are good indicators of mother–infant synchrony. Zentall et al. found that infants' rhythm was stronger and interactions were led better at 5 months than at 3 months. According to the study, an infant's ability to send signals and a mother's ability to perceive them increase with synchrony over time. Studies have shown that mother–infant synchrony will result in the infant's development of self-control and other self-regulating behaviours later on in life.
The related concept of maternal mind-mindedness assesses the mother's ability to understand and verbalize the infant's mind: thoughts, desires, intentions and memories. Maternal mind-mindedness has been found to be related to some developmental results, such as attachment security. A caregiver's comment is deemed an appropriate mind-related comment if the comment was deemed to match the infant's behaviour by the independent coder, if the comment associated the infant's current activity to past activities, and/or if the comment encouraged the infant to go on with his or her intentions when the conversation paused. This correlates to high maternal mind-mindedness. If the caregiver assigns the wrong internal state to the baby's behaviour, if the comment about the current activity is not insufficiently associated with a past event, if the comment deters the infant from proceeding with the current activity, and/or if the comment is unclear, it is deemed a in-appropriate mind-related comment and correlates to low mind-mindedness.
Role of maternal sensitivity in development
Infancy
Infants whose mothers are more sensitive are more likely to display secure attachment relationships. Because the maternal figure is generally accessible and responsive to the infant's needs, the infant is able to form expectations of the mother's behaviour. Once expectations are met and the infant feels a consistency in the mother's sensitivity, the infant is able to find security in the maternal figure. Those infants whose mothers do not respond to the signals from their children or respond inappropriately to their children's cries for attention will form insecure and anxious attachments because the infants are unable to consistently depend on the maternal figures for predictable and safe responses.In order for the infant to feel that the maternal figure is accessible and responsive, a certain amount of interaction must occur. Though the most research has been done on face-to-face interaction, studies have found that bodily interaction is also important in sensitivity and development. It is not how often the baby is held that reflects attachment, but how the baby is held and whether or not the baby desires to be held that matters in attachment development. Another factor that is important is sensitivity to the infant's feeding signals. There lies some controversy in whether infants who form insecure attachment relationships with their mothers do so because the mother is particularly insensitive to her child's needs or because of differences in their personality and due to life situations.