The proposed studies will test a model which postulates perceived self-efficacy to be a mediating link between mothers' attributional styles, mood state, availability of social support and perceived infant temperament and the developmental progress of their infants. The model predicts that perceptions of self- efficacy can be marred (i.e., lowered) either by low self-efficacy being associated with perceived loss of control and helplessness or with defensive and over-controlling behaviors. In addition, low self-efficacy is predicted to result in learning deficits during childcare tasks. Our laboratory studies will simulate parenting tasks by creating an experimental task which involves responding to audiotaped infant cries. The simulation task common to the three proposed experiments is a learning task in which mothers are presented a series of infant cries, and are asked to execute one of two possible responses to stop the cry. Their perceived control (actual control is zero) is determined by how successful they believe one response to be over the other. Mothers will be categorized on perceived control scores. We will then correlate physiologic response patterns, recorded during the learning task, with behavioral and questionnaire data. Experiment I will test the hypothesis that negative attributions and low social support lead to defensive and over-controlling behaviors and subsequent learning deficits. Defensiveness will be measured by the Marlowe-Crowne Scale and heart rate responses. The predicted learning deficits will be assessed in Seligman's learned helplessness paradigm. Experiment II will test the model's prediction that mood state and social support interact with the temperament dimension to determine when difficulty poses problems. We will manipulate frequency of cry termination in a laboratory task which simulates important differences between difficult and easy infants. Experiments III will test the model's prediction that an over-controlling, defensive response pattern exerts a negative influence on the mother-infant relationship resulting in delayed developmental progress for the infant. Interactional patterns will be assessed in a feeding session and the infant's developmental progress assessed by behavior in the Ainsworth and Wittig strange situation and by performance on the Bayley scales.
