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Biomedical subjects

W L Donovan

Publications and source records attributed to W L Donovan.

9 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2000

Maternal illusory control predicts socialization strategies and toddler compliance.

This study examined the relation between mothers' perception of their capacity for controlling infant crying and a later measure of parent-toddler social interaction-compliance with parental requests. Fifty-seven mothers participated in (a) a laboratory task when their children were 5 months old to assess mothers' perception of control and (b) a toy-cleanup task when their children were 24 months old to assess toddler compliance. Perception-of-control scores on the laboratory task reflected accuracy of perception and ranged from accurate to greatly overestimating control, with an overestimation referred to as an illusion of control. Mothers were categorized into three illusion-of-control groups: low, moderate, and high. Toddlers of mothers in the low and high illusion-of-control groups were more likely to be categorized as highly defiant than were toddlers of mothers in the moderate-illusion group. Mothers with high illusory control were most likely to use a high power-assertion strategy (negative control), and when negotiating, their toddlers' expression of autonomy was most likely to escalate into defiance.

Child Behavior↗
PubMed1990

Maternal self-efficacy: illusory control and its effect on susceptibility to learned helplessness.

66 mothers of 5-month-old infants participated in 2 simulated child-care tasks to examine differences in response to the performance demands of child care. Mothers first participated in a task in which they estimated their perception of control over stopping an audiotaped infant cry (illusion of control). 1 week later, they participated in another task to assess their ability to learn effective responses in stopping the cry (susceptibility to learned helplessness). Mothers with a high illusion of control differed from mothers with low or moderate illusory control by showing increased susceptibility to helplessness. Physiologically, mothers with low and moderate illusory control showed attenuated and "attentive" heart-rate responses to the impending cry, respectively. Mothers with high illusory control were "inattentive", with mothers of difficult infants in that group responding "defensively". Our data suggest that high illusion of control may be a maladaptive response to the performance demands of child care.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1989

Maternal self-efficacy and infant attachment: integrating physiology, perceptions, and behavior.

48 mothers of 5-month-old infants were asked to estimate their control over the termination of an infant cry in a laboratory-simulated child-care task. Mothers who greatly overestimated their control differed from low or moderate "illusion-of-control" mothers by exhibiting a depression-prone attributional style, a depressed mood state, perceiving the father as participating less in child care, and responding to impending infant cries with heart-rate acceleration characteristic of aversive conditioning. At age 16 months, 40 of the mother-infant pairs participated in the Ainsworth Strange Situation. Insecure infant attachment at 16 months was associated with maternal perception of overcontrol, depressed mood state, and aversive conditioning to the impending cry in the laboratory task at the 5-month period.

Arousal↗
PubMed1985

Simulating conditions of learned helplessness: the effects of interventions and attributions.

We report 2 experiments that assess factors potentially responsible for a proactive interference with the sensitivity of a mother's response to infant signals. Using a version of the "learned helplessness" paradigm, mothers' performance on a solvable task was assessed following pretreatments that involved exposure to an infant cry but that differed in the mothers' ability to exert control over the termination of the cry. Each experiment explored the role of varying attributions made by a mother in the development of, or the reversal of, the helplessness phenomenon. The first experiment addressed the question of whether a specific intervention (i.e., providing the mother an attribution for failure) can reduce the debilitating effect of prior experience with failure. The results indicated that the debilitating effects associated with previous failure were reversed for the 16 mothers assigned to the intervention group. 40 mothers participated in the second experiment, which varied attributions assigned to an identical cry stimulus (i.e., the cry was produced by an "easy" vs. a "difficult" infant). This experiment assessed the effect of varying attributions on the mothers' ability to terminate the cry. We found that mothers pretreated with inescapable cries and those receiving the experimental manipulation of attributing the cry to a "difficult" infant showed debilitated performance in stopping the cry when given the opportunity. We propose that models based on learned helplessness theory have value in the study of caregiver-infant relationships, in particular, caregivers' perceived and objective effectiveness in responding to an infant's signals.

Adult↗
PubMed1981

Maternal learned helplessness and physiologic response to infant crying.

Maternal response to infant crying was studied by exposing mothers of young infants to varying degrees of control over the termination of infant crying. As adapted from the learned-helplessness paradigm, each mother was tested on an instrumental shuttle box task following exposure to one of three instrumental pretreatments: (a) escape-four button presses terminated the infant cry; (b) inescape-button press was unrelated to cry termination; and (c) control-mothers passively listened to the cry. Following pretreatment, each mother was given an instrumental shuttle box task consisting of a solvable task with an alternation response that controlled cry termination. Cardiac responses were monitored throughout the session. On the performance measures, mothers pretreated with inescapable infant crying showed debilitated performance on the second task. Failure to escape, number of trials to escape criterion and latency of response to the cry were all greater for the inescape group compared with escape and control mothers, with exception that inescapable and control mothers did not differ significantly on response latency scores. In addition, only mothers with prior experience controlling the cry showed cardiac deceleration, an index of attentional processing, during a 10-sec anticipatory period preceding the cry episode of the solvable instrumental task. These cardiac data provide suggestive evidence that the important behavioral differences may in part be attributable to differential processing of cues signaling the onset of crying.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1980

Physiologic correlates of direct and averted gaze.

The present study was designed to explore the effects of reciprocated and unreciprocated gaze upon skin conductance and heart rate response. A paradigm used previously to investigate maternal response to infant gaze was selected which allowed us to consider possible order effects, sex differences and differential rates of habituation in response to direct and averted gaze. Twenty-four males and 24 females were shown 10 sec silent images of an adult face on a videotape monitor of an adult face. In one condition, the en face position offered eye contact; in the other condition, eye contact was not possible. Each subject viewed a sequence of six identical episodes of one condition followed by six episodes of the other condition. Analysis of skin conductance response revealed a significant effect of stimulus sex (p less than 0.05) with the male stimulus figures eliciting the greater skin conductance response. HR responses to the two conditions varied not only as a function of stimulus sex but also as a function of the viewer's sex. The most distinctive data came from a male viewing another male. For this group alone, responding was consistent to unreciprocated gaze viewed first (p less than 0.01) and viewed second (p less than 0.05); and for this group alone responding to reciprocated gaze viewed first habituated (p less than 0.05).

Adolescent↗
PubMed1978

Early cognitive development and its relation to maternal physiologic and behavioral responsiveness.

Data are presented which support the hypothesis that infant cognitive development is a function of maternal responsiveness to infant cues. 22 mothers whose physiologic responses to infant signals had been recorded at an earlier date participated in the follow-up study reported here. Mother-infant dyads were videotaped during a feeding session when the infant was 9 months of age. Behavioral data collected were the mother's responses to her infant's facial orientation. The statistic developed to index maternal sensitivity was the rate of maternal responding during infant gaze/the rate of responding during infant looking away. Development of the object concept was assessed at 15 months using the Uzgiris and Hunt scale. The data indicated that the development of the concept of the object is positively related to maternal behavioral sensitivity and that mothers who were behaviorally sensitive to infant cues earlier had exhibited physiologic responses to infant signals.

Adult↗