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

7/30/2019 Maternal Self-Efficacy and Infant Attachment: Integrating Physiology, Perceptions, and Behavior

1/14

Maternal Self-Efficacy and Infant Attachment: Integrating Physiology, Perceptions, andBehaviorAuthor(s): Wilberta L. Donovan and Lewis A. LeavittSource: Child Development, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Apr., 1989), pp. 460-472Published by: Wiley on behalf of the Society for Research in Child Development

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1130990 .Accessed: 08/05/2013 19:04

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Wiley and Society for Research in Child Developmentare collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and

extend access to Child Development.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 149.169.173.40 on Wed, 8 May 2013 19:04:53 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=blackhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=srcdhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/1130990?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/1130990?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=srcdhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=black


2/14

Maternal Self-Efficacy and Infant Attachment:Integrating Physiology, Perceptions,and BehaviorWilberta L. Donovan and Lewis A. LeavittUniversityof Wisconsin-Madison

DONOVAN,WILBERTAL., andLEAVITr,LEWIS . MaternalSelf-Efficacynd InfantAttachment:IntegratingPhysiology, Perceptions,and Behavior.CHILDDEVELOPMENT,1989, 60, 460-472. 48mothersof 5-month-oldnfantswere askedto estimatetheircontrolover the termination f an infantcry in a laboratory-simulatedhild-caretask.Motherswho greatlyoverestimated heir controldif-fered from low or moderate"illusion-of-control" othersby exhibitinga depression-prone ttribu-tional style, a depressed mood state, perceivingthe fatheras participatingess in child care, andrespondingto impendinginfantcries with heart-rate ccelerationcharacteristic f aversivecondi-tioning. At age 16 months, 40 of the mother-infantpairs participated n the AinsworthStrangeSituation. Insecure infant attachmentat 16 months was associated with maternalperception ofovercontrol,depressedmoodstate,andaversiveconditioning o the impendingcryin the laboratorytaskat the 5-monthperiod.

During interaction, both infant andmother emit signals designed to capture theother's attention, indicating whether to join,to sustain, or to terminate the interactive pro-cess. On the infant's part, crying is a powerfulsignal influencing the developing pattern ofinteraction. The mother's response to the cryis determined by her perception of the mean-ing of and causal attributions for the cry aswell as by circumstantial events attending therelease of the cry. Crying is one of the firstchallenges faced by mothers. If successful atterminating the cry, the mother may gain con-fidence in her own effectiveness; if unsuc-cessful in terminating the cry, the mother maybegin to focus on her own inefficacy.

Perception of efficacy has been identifiedas an influential factor in the initiation andregulation of behavior (Rotter, Chance, &Phares, 1972; Seligman, 1975) and in judg-ments of how well one expects to do in a par-ticular situation (Bandura, 1982). A motherlearns about her effectiveness as a parent asshe responds to her infant's signals. The de-

velopmental literature indicates that maternalwarmth and sensitivity to infant behaviors arelinked to later child social and cognitive com-petency. Although there is not agreement asto whether these variables work indirectlythrough the creation of a secure attachmentthat encourages the infant to explore, or di-rectly through the provision of experienceswhich enhance developmental competency(Ainsworth, Blehar, Waters, & Wall, 1978;Lamb, Thompson, Gardner, Charnov, &Estes, 1984; Sroufe, 1983), the mother's per-ceived self-efficacy is an important determi-nant of whether or not she responds sensi-tively to her infant's signals (Donovan, 1981;Donovan & Leavitt, 1985a; Donovan, Leavitt,& Walsh, 1987).

In the current study, the mother's attri-butional style, mood state, social support,and perception of her infant's temperamentare considered potential determinants of themother's responsiveness to infant behavior.Self-efficacy is the mediating construct be-tween these determinants and the develop-This research was supported n part by NIH grantHD-03352to the WaismanCenter, NIHgrantMH-42479,and by grant150649 from the GraduateSchoolof the Universityof Wisconsin-Madison.Portionsof these data were presentedat the InternationalConferenceon InfantStudies,Los Angeles, 1986;the SocietyforPsychophysiologicalResearch,Montreal,1986;and the Societyfor Research in Child Development, Baltimore,1987.We wish to thankMaryRoachfora criticalreadingof the manuscriptandJamesVer Hoeve forhis generoushelp throughhis manyskills as acomputer expert and psychophysiologist. We are indebted to Frances Graham for an insightfuldiscussion of our data. ReghanWalsh gave advice and assistancethroughoutall phases of thisresearch. Her contribution was substantial and we are grateful for it. Requests for reprints should beaddressed to either author, Waisman Center on Mental Retardation and Human Development,University of Wisconsin--Madison, Madison, WI 53705.[ChildDevelopment, 1989,60, 460-472. ? 1989by the SocietyforResearch n Child Development,Inc.All rightsreserved.0009-3920/89/6002-0010$01.00]

This content downloaded from 149.169.173.40 on Wed, 8 May 2013 19:04:53 PMAll use subject toJSTOR Terms and Conditions
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


3/14

Donovan and Leavitt 461mental outcome of the child. We have usedmother-infant attachment as a developmentaloutcome to assess the implication of variationin perceived self-efficacy.

Attribution theory (Heider, 1958; Kelley,1973) proposes underlying rules by whichpeople attribute motives or causes to behav-iors they observe. An attribution is defined bythe intersection of factors on three dimen-sions-internal/external, stable/unstable, andglobal/specific. Internal factors lie within theindividual, whereas external factors lie withinthe environment. Stable factors are recurrentor long-lived, whereas unstable factors areintermittent and short-lived. Global factorsaffect a wide variety of outcomes, whereasspecific factors have a narrower focus. Attri-butional style characterizes how individualsformulate their attributions along these threedimensions. A self-serving attributional styleis a characteristic of the self-efficacious personand reflects making internal, stable, andglobal attributions for positive outcomes andexternal, unstable, and specific attributionsfor negative outcomes. In contrast, making ex-ternal, unstable, and specific attributions forpositive outcomes and internal, stable, andglobal attributions for negative outcomes hasbeen labeled a depression-prone attribu-tional style (Abramson, Seligman, & Teas-dale, 1978). Bugental and Shennum (1984)have reported that a parent's attribution aboutsuccess or failure in child rearing acts as aselective filter or sensitizer to child behaviors.A mother with low self-perceived efficacy re-acts negatively to the unresponsive child in amanner that reinforces unresponsiveness inthe child, thus demonstrating how the child'sbehavioral patterns interact with parental at-tributions about control to affect adult social-izing tactics.

Mood state, as well, may adversely affectmother-infant interaction. Low self-perceivedefficacy, learned helplessness, and passivecoping have been associated with physiologicsymptoms and self-reports of depression (Mc-Cabe & Schneiderman, 1985). The behaviorsof a depressed caregiver, including emotionalunavailability, apathy, and confusion, are insharp contrast to and may potentially interferewith optimal caregiving behavior. Parentalmental health is particularly relevant in pre-dicting the social competence of the child(Sameroff& Feil, 1985). Insecure attachmentsare more frequent in dyads containing de-pressed mothers than in dyads containingnondepressed mothers (Radke-Yarrow, Cum-mings, Kuczynski, & Chapman, 1985). Clini-cians are becoming increasingly concerned

with the significant effect of less severe ma-ternal depressive symptoms on the child's de-velopmental outcome (Zuckerman & Beards-lee, 1987). Our research explores the relationbetween the depressed mood state of themother within the range of a normally func-tioning population and the child's later devel-opmental outcome.Social support frequently counters lessthan optimal environments and is associatedwith increased sensitive, responsive, and in-volved maternal behavior (Cmic, Ragozin,Greenberg, Robinson, & Basham, 1983; Croc-kenberg, 1981, 1987). Data support the thesisthat social support facilitates the maintenanceof self-esteem in times of stress (Cohen & Mc-Kay, 1984). Cutrona and Troutman (1986)have proposed that social support exerts aprotective function against maternal depres-sion by enabling the mother to perceive her-self as more effective. The probability offorming an insecure attachment is reduced forinfants of depressed mothers if the husband, afigure of social support, is in the household(Radke-Yarrow et al., 1985).Numerous studies have explored the linkbetween the mother's perception of her in-fant's temperament and other maternal or de-velopmental outcome measures. Studies indi-cate that parents perceive the cries of difficultinfants to be more aversive, demanding, and"spoiled sounding" (Lounsbury & Bates,1982) as well as more grating, arousing, andpiercing (Boukydis & Burgess, 1982) than thecries of easy infants. Boukydis and Burgessreport that difficult-infant cries elicit greaterphysiologic arousal than easy-infant cries. Ev-idence is mixed as to the effect of perceptionsof infant difficulty on maternal responsive-ness. While there are reports of lowered re-sponsiveness of mothers who perceive theirinfants as difficult (Campbell, 1979; Mil-liones, 1978), others have found that the diffi-cult infant elicits attentive behavior from themother (Klein, 1984) or has no noticeable im-pact (Daniels, Plomin, & Greenhalgh, 1984).When infant difficulty has been studied as apotential predictor of the attachment relation-ship, no relationship has been found (Bates,Maslin, & Frankel, 1985), although individual

aspects of temperament, such as proneness todistress, may predict resistant behavior, oneaspect of an insecure attachment (Goldsmith& Alansky, 1987).Learned helplessness theory (Seligman,1975) has provided a useful model for thelearning of personal efficacy. Using a simu-lated child-care task designed after the help-



4/14

462 Child Developmentlessness paradigm, Donovan (1981) demon-strated that the mother's past experience withfailure in terminating infant crying proac-tively interfered with performance on a child-care task. Furthermore, only mothers withprior experience controlling the cry exhibitedphysiologic indicators of attentional process-ing to the impending cry. Attributing the cryto a "difficult" infant as compared with at-tributing the identical stimulus cry to an"easy" infant increased the helplessness ef-fect (Donovan & Leavitt, 1985a).

In the current study, an alternative para-digm was employed to assess self-efficacy bydirectly measuring maternal perception ofcontrol over the termination of an infant cry.In contrast to the development of helpless-ness, individuals who experience successshould develop the expectation that importantoutcomes are controllable. In fact, people of-ten treat noncontingent events as if they werecontingent, thus overestimating their owncontrol and thereby exhibiting an illusion ofcontrol (Alloy & Abramson, 1979). Experi-mentally, control can be defined by the indi-vidual's estimation of the contingency be-tween outcome and response. Hence therelation between experimentally controlledobjective contingencies and a person's sub-jective judgment about contingencies can bestudied in the laboratory (Alloy & Abramson,1979).Indexing physiologic substrates of thepsychological processes activated while at-tending to environmental stimuli can enhanceour understanding of a person's perception ofcontrol. Cardiac deceleration following stimu-lus onset is an index of the orienting response(Graham, 1979) and has been used as a mea-sure of attentional processing (Lacey & La-cey, 1974). In contrast, cardiac acceleration isa physiologic indicator of activation and is acomponent of the defensive response, whichbuffers or minimizes the effects of stimulationwhen the external environment is "rejected"or attention is turned inward, such as duringmental arithmetic (Lacey & Lacey, 1974). Thecharacteristic phasic cardiac deceleration as-sociated with attention has been found to cor-relate with the mother's sensitivity to infant

signals during a feeding session and with theinfant's development (Donovan, Leavitt, &Balling, 1978). Data also indicate that securityof mother-infant attachment is reflected in thephysiologic responses of both mother and in-fant to the social events of interest in theAinsworth and Wittig (1969) Strange Situa-tion (Donovan & Leavitt, 1985b).

In this short-term longitudinal study, adepression-prone attributional style, a nega-tive mood state, low social support, and per-ceived infant difficulty were predicted to ad-versely affect maternal response to infantbehavior and subsequent infant development.Since perceived self-efficacy reflects howwell one expects to manage in a given situa-tion (Bandura, 1982), assessing perceptions ofcontrol allows us to explore the role of self-efficacy as a mediator between the above de-terminants and the developmental outcome ofthe child. Specifically, the relation betweenthe mother's perception of control over thetermination of an infant cry in a simulatedchild-care task and one aspect of the infant'sdevelopmental outcome-security of attach-ment-will be assessed.MethodSubjectsForty-eight mothers participated in thisstudy. Their mean age was 29.5 years (range19-39 years). All were white and married andeach had a 5-month-old infant; 29 were pri-miparous. All had graduated from highschool, 43 of the 48 had attended college, 32had graduated, and 12 had attended graduateschool. Of the original 48 mothers, 40 mothersand their infants participated in the follow-upattachment phase of the study. Infants rangedin age from 14.6 to 16.4 months, with a meanage of 15.8 months. Seven of the 48 mothershad moved prior to testing, and one declinedto participate because of time constraints. Allfamilies were intact throughout the entire pe-riod of data collection.Instruments

Demographic data and related vari-ables.-Demographic information includedsex of infant, parity, mother's age, educationallevel, and occupational status, including worksituation at the time of the study. The moth-er's degree of conflict over her decision to re-main at home or work outside of the homewas assessed on a seven-point Likert scale.Related information included method of feed-ing the infant and an estimation of the num-ber of hours per day her infant cried.Infant Attribution Scale.-A modifiedversion of the Attributional Style Question-naire (Peterson et al., 1982) was developed tofocus specifically on maternal perceptions ofoutcomes involving infant care. The original12-item, self-report questionnaire assesses anindividual's tendency to make internal/exter-nal, stable/unstable, and global/specific attri-



5/14

Donovan and Leavitt 463butions for positive and negative outcomes inaffiliative and achievement domains. Theachievement-related items were not relevantfor this study and were replaced with infant-care items (e.g., You are out in public and youcannot quiet your crying infant.). Coefficientalpha reliabilities for subscales are as follows:positive outcome internality = .38, positiveoutcome stability = .56, positive outcomeglobality = .42; negative outcome internality= .43, negative outcome stability = .60, nega-tive outcome globality = .60. Internal consis-tency for the composite scales for positive andnegative outcomes was .69 and .59, respec-tively, with no correlation (r = .07) betweenthe two.

Beck Depression Inventory (BDI).-TheBDI is a 21-item, self-administered measureof depression with demonstrated validity(Beck, 1972).Social support.--The mother's percep-tion of social support was assessed by askinghow often the father and persons other thanthe father participated in the infant's care.These questions were answered on a seven-point Likert scale.Infant Temperament Questionnaire(Carey & McDevitt, 1978).-Specific infantbehaviors are rated on a six-point scale reflect-ing the frequency of a behavior in varioussituations. Scores on five of the scales (rhyth-micity, approach, adaptability, mood, and in-tensity) were averaged. Based on a mean splitof these scores (ratherthan the more stringentcriterion adopted by Carey) mothers were cat-egorized as having either a "difficult" or an"easy" infant.

ProceduresMothers visited the laboratory twice.During the first visit, they completed the in-struments described above and participatedin a simulated child-care task to assess theirperception of control over the termination ofan infant cry. Cardiac rate was monitored byelectrocardiogram throughout the simulatedtask. During the second visit, approximately 1year later, the BDI and social support itemswere again administered and security ofmother-infant attachment was assessed.Simulated child-care task.-The task is amodification of the illusion of control para-digm developed by Alloy and Abramson(1979) in which perceived control is studiedexperimentally. The task involves making oneof two responses to an event after which thesubject is asked to estimate their perceived

control over the event. In our task, themothers responded to an infant cry, their goalbeing the termination of the cry. Objectivecontrol, as opposed to perceived control, isdefined as the relative difference in responseeffectiveness. Because responses wereequally effective during the task, objectivecontrol was zero. Cry termination occurred50% of the time for each response.

The tape-recorded infant cry was pro-duced by a 5-month-old female infant and re-corded on a Sony TC-850 tape recorder. Itwas elicited by having the mother play withher infant and then withdraw from the infant'svisual field. Periods of fussing and pauseswere edited out so that the stimulus tape con-sisted of a continuous cry. The tape was pre-sented at a level comparable to that experi-enced in the home [80 db (A)] via a 10.16-cmKLH Model 708 speaker within the sound-attenuated chamber. Electronic switching-re-lay equipment was used for controlling stimu-lus presentation and for recording mothers'responses. The stimulus apparatus for thejudgment of control task consisted of a whitewooden stand-up platform on which a redlight was positioned facing the mother. Theresponse apparatus consisted of a metal boxon which a spring-loaded button wasmounted in the center.

Each mother received 42 30-sec trials.Each trial was initiated by the onset of a 10-sec red light (CS) followed by cry onset(UCS). For the first 40 trials and for trial 42,the onset of the UCS was simultaneous withCS offset. On trial 41, the cry stimulus wasomitted. The intertrial interval ranged from20 to 30 sec with a mean of 25 sec. Instruc-tions stated that this was a problem-solvingtask, and that after the presentation of eachcry the mother had the option of either press-ing or not pressing the button. Her responsewas followed by a fixed schedule of cry termi-nation at 5 sec (success) on half of the trials orcry continuation for 20 sec (failure).Following the child-care simulation task,each mother was asked to estimate how muchcontrol she thought she had (i.e., was one re-sponse more effective than the other) over thetermination of the cry. Estimates of controlwere indicated on a scale in units of 5 withextreme values of 0 (labeled "no control") and100 (labeled "complete control") and the 50%point (labeled "intermediate control"). Thetask was designed as a zero contingency taskin which neither response was more effectivethan the other in terminating the cry. There-



6/14

464 Child Developmentfore, objective control (i.e., zero control) sub-tracted from perceived control constituted themother's illusion of control score.' Eachmother then completed the Cry Characteris-tics Scale (Zeskind & Lester, 1978). Percep-tion of the cry is assessed on eight bipolardimensions (e.g., urgent vs. not urgent) ar-ranged on seven-point Likert scales.

Physiologic response recording.-Car-diac activity was recorded via miniature elec-trodes attached to both ankles and right fore-arm. Electrodes were attached prior to givingthe instructions. The heart-rate (HR) signalwas transduced and amplified by an OffnerType R Dynograph and via a Vetter FMModel-3 recorder adaptor was recorded onmagnetic tape on a Teac 3300 S recorder. TheR-R intervals of the electrocardiogram weretimed to the nearest millisecond off-line usinga PDP-12 computer and then converted tobeats per minute for each 1-sec interval. Thephysiologic dependent measure was themean cardiac change scores (i.e., deviationfrom prestimulus level) during (a) the 10-secCS interval prior to the onset of the UCS, (b)the initial 5-sec UCS interval, (c) the 20-secinterval during the omission of the UCS ontrial 41, and (d) the 10-sec CS period on trial42.The Strange Situation. -Approximately1 year after the first visit, infants and theirmothers returned to the laboratory to partici-pate in the Ainsworth and Wittig (1969)Strange Situation. This procedure is com-prised of a standard sequence of episodes de-signed to assess the balance between the in-fant's exploratory and attachment behavioralsystems. Observations are made of the infant'sreaction to a novel environment, interaction

with a stranger, and separation from and re-union with its mother. Two adult femalesserved as the stranger. Sessions were video-taped through a one-way mirrorfor later anal-ysis. Verbal interactions were recordedthrough ceiling microphones.Two trained coders, blind to the illusionscores of the mothers, assessed the security ofattachment according to the classification sys-tem developed by Ainsworth and colleagues(1978) and independently placed each infant

in one of the eight subgroups. Reliability(agreements/[agreements + disagreements])was 97% for the three major classifications (A,

B, C), and 90% when all eight subgroupswere considered.Results

Mothers were divided into three groupsbased on their illusion of control scores. Cate-gorization of mothers allowed for the possibil-ity that some predictors might bear a linearrelation, others a curvilinear relation, to illu-sion scores. Recalling that objective controlwas zero, mothers with scores of 50 weredesignated as High Illusion (n = 10). TheLow Illusion group included 16 easy andeight difficult infants, the Middle Illusiongroup included four easy and 10 difficult in-fants, and the High Illusion group includedfive easy and five difficult infants.An initial multivariate analysis of vari-

ance (MANOVA) with illusion of control asthe between-subjects factor and attributionalstyle, mood, support, and infant temperamentas dependent variables yielded a significanteffect, F(18,74) = 1.91, p < .03. Since earlierwork has frequently found the infant tempera-ment variable to interact with the main vari-able of interest (Donovan & Leavitt, 1985a;Donovan et al., 1978; Leavitt & Donovan,1979), a second MANOVA was conductedwith illusion of control and temperament asthe between-subjects factors and attributionalstyle, mood, and support as the dependentvariables. This analysis yielded a significantinteraction, F(16,70) = 1.86, p < .04. Univari-ate analyses, as well as trend analyses, fromthese two MANOVAs were then examinedand are reported below. We report, as well,the univariate analyses on the demographicvariables.Concurrent Correlates of Illusion of ControlDemographic data and related vari-ables.-Univariate analyses on the demo-graphic variables of age, education, and occu-pational status, and frequency counts on sexof infant and parity, demonstrated that moth-

1While not systematicallyrelated to illusion group,the disproportionate se of one responseoverthe otheryielded a minimaldegree of controlfor five of the mothers.For these mothersactualcontrolfromestimatedcontrol was theirillusion score.



7/14

Donovan and Leavitt 465ers in the Low, Middle, and High Illusiongroups did not differ (p's > .25). Differencesin method of feeding as a function of illusiongroup were significant, F(2,37) = 4.22, p

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

Documents