Maternal learned helplessness and physiologic response to infant crying.

Abstract

Exposed 49 mothers of 3–4 mo old infants to varying degrees of control over the termination of a tape of infant crying. Each S received 1 of 3 instrumental pretreatments: (a) escape—4 buttonpresses terminated the infant cry, (b) inescape—buttonpress was unrelated to cry termination, and (c) control—mothers passively listened to the cry. Following pretreatment, each S was given an instrumental shuttlebox task consisting of a solvable task with an alternation response that controlled cry termination. Cardiac responses were monitored throughout the session. Ss pretreated with inescapable infant crying showed debilitated performance on the 2nd task. Failure to escape, number of trials to escape criterion, and latency of response to the cry were all greater for the inescape group. In addition, only Ss 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 evidence that the important behavioral differences may in part be attributable to differential processing of cues signaling the onset of crying. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)