Interactions of mothers and their developmentally?delayed infants: Age, parity and gender effects

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Abstract
This study assessed the relationship of maternal and infant characteristics to the interactional behaviors of mothers and their developmentally‐delayed infants; both individual and dyadic measures of interaction were utilized. Mother‐infant dyads were videotaped during naturalistic interaction in a clinical setting; infant chronological age ranged from 3 to 23½ months, while infant mental age varied from 1 to 14 months. Regression analyses revealed that infant chronological age was particularly predictive of infants’ tendency to initiate interactions, with higher levels of initiations occurring in the older infant group. However, more turn‐taking between the mothers and infants was observed in the higher infant mental age group. With respect to parity, more tactile and vocal interaction, as assessed by dyadic measures, occurred between multiparous mothers and their babies, while infant gender predicted few of the interactional measures.