Temperament and separation behaviors of infants
Creators: name: Brooke, Penny Simpson
Publisher: name: University of Utah
Year: 2012
Subjects: Child Mental Health
Mother and Child

description: The question investigated in this study was the relationship of infants' temperamental make-up with behaviors exhibited when their mothers leave then with a stranger.  This aspect of infant behavior was considered important since previous research in this field suggests that some maternal separations may have a detrimental effect on a child's mental health.  The sample for this study included twenty-four infants between the ages of seven and twelve months.  The subjects were:  (1) infant of mothers who were not working so that the infants would have had relatively the same amount of time at home with their mothers, (2) the youngest in the family to avoid complexity in the mother-child relationship, (3) freedom from symptoms of ill health at the time of testing.  The setting for the study was a room in the College of Nursing.  The tool for measuring temperamental make-up was devised by Thomas, Chess, Birch, Hertzig and Korn in 1963 to identify children's typical patterns of behavior in a variety of daily living situations and provide means for scoring these behaviors.  The temperamental make-up (TMU) rating is comprised of ten subcategories.  These subcategories are: (1) activity level, (2) rhythmicity, (3) approach or withdrawal, (4) adaptability, (5) intensity of reaction, (6) threshold of responsiveness, (7) quality of mood, (8) distractibility, (9) attention span, and (10) persistence.  The child is rated on a three point scale according to his most frequent style of behavior in each of the ten categories.  These ratings reflect the usual response of the child along the ten measures of temperament.  A video tape recording was made of the infant both prior to and during the period of separation from his mother.  The criteria for measuring the infant's behavior when separated from his mother were established by Ainsworth and Bell in 1970.  The behavioral indicators of distress which they identified were:  (1) changes in the infants' activity level during separation from his mother, (2) frequency and duration of seeking behaviors such as trying to open the door and looking at the chair the mother had occupied prior to her departure, (3) crying behaviors, and (4) responses to a stranger who remains with the infants both prior to and during his separation from his mother.  For the purpose of scoring, the video tapes were reviewed four times.  The first scoring was for duration and direction of the infants' activity, the second for duration and frequency of seeking behaviors, the third time for duration and intensity of crying, and the fourth time for the frequency of response to the stranger.  As the tapes were reviewed it appeared to the researcher that other behaviors such as a bottle and pacifier sucking, standing facing the corner, cuddling and rocking with a blanket and frozen stances occurred frequently; therefore, these behaviors were also recorded.  The ten ratings of the infants; temperamental make-up were then correlated with the measures of separation distress.  Twelve variables correlated significantly beyond the .05 level of confidence.  Thus, the data showed some trends but did not overwhelmingly support a strong relationship between temperament and separation behaviors.  The areas of high correlation and statistical significance included the relationship between a high TMU approach rating and heightened intensity of activity as well as greater duration of activity during the mothers' absence.  Infants who were TMU rated as less adaptable, rated high on the frequency of behavior of seeking after their mother following separation from them.  A TMU quality of predominately negative mood correlated significantly with the duration of time the infant south after his mother and also with a long duration and high intensity of crying behavior.  The less distractible the infant, the longer the duration of crying behavior.  The infants with higher distractibility TMU ratings were rated as using oral self-comforting measures more often than infants with lower ratings.  The more persistent the infants were rated on the TMU, the greater was the frequency of seeking behaviors during the mothers' absence.