title: Maternal self-efficacy and experimentally manipulated infant difficulty effects on maternal sensory sensitivity: a signal detection analysis.
abstract: The impact of differences in maternal self-efficacy and infant difficulty on mothers' sensitivity to small changes in the fundamental frequency of an audiotaped infant's cry was explored in 2 experiments. The experiments share in common experimental manipulations of infant difficulty, a laboratory derived measure of maternal efficacy (low, moderate, and high illusory control), and the use of signal detection methodology to measure maternal sensory sensitivity. In Experiment 1 (N = 72), easy and difficult infant temperament was manipulated by varying the amount of crying (i.e., frequency of cry termination) in a simulated child-care task. In Experiment 2 (N = 51), easy and difficult infant temperament was manipulated via exposure to the solvable or unsolvable pretreatment of a learned helplessness task to mirror mothers' ability to soothe a crying infant. In both experiments, only mothers with high illusory control showed reduced sensory sensitivity under the difficult infant condition compared with the easy infant condition.
authors.affiliation: Waisman Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 53705, USA. Donovan@waisman.wisc.edu
authors.forename: Wilberta
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Donovan
authors.forename: Lewis
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Leavitt
authors.forename: Nicole
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Taylor
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003448:Crying; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D018730:Infant Behavior / Q000523:psychology; D008425:Maternal Behavior / Q000523:psychology*; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology*; D020377:Self Efficacy; D012684:Sensory Thresholds; D017603:Signal Detection, Psychological; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013694:Temperament