Mother-infant attachment: the importance of the mother's visual field.
The purpose of this study was to answer 2 questions: (1) how important to 2-year-old children is fact-to-face contact with the mother, and (2) do attachment behaviors, such as looking at, talking to, and being close to mothers, interact in a compensatory fashion? 24 male and female children, 18 to 30 months, were observed with their mothers for 15 minutes in 3 conditions: (1) mother facing tethered toys, (2) mother facing away from toys, and (3) mother behind a partition and not visible from toys. Observations were made by time-lapse photography techniques. Results indicated that the potential for face-to-face contact was important: children spent 94% of their time in mother's visual field when she faced the toys and 50% of their time in her visual field when she either faced away or was behind the partition. Overall, they established face-to-face contact about 12% of the time. Some compensation was observed: talking and physical proximity increased as visual contact decreased.
D002675:Child, Preschool; D005106:Exploratory Behavior; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009769:Object Attachment; D013037:Spatial Behavior; D014794:Visual Fields; D014796:Visual Perception