Abstract
Increasing emphasis on the importance of mother and infant achieving interactive synchrony early in the perinatal period makes it imperative to include in the nursing care for mothers and newborns both assessment and intervention strategies designed to promote interaction. Limited research is documented concerning interventions utilized in nursing care which influence positive interaction. The purpose of this study was to determine if providing mothers with the opportunity to perform the MABI would result in significant demonstration of more behaviors indicative of interactive synchrony as measured by the observation of the feeding situation. The research design was a pre-observation, post-observation, randomized control group design. Subjects were randomly selected from mothers who had a cesarean section and their infants admitted to the postpartum unit in a large teaching hospital in Galveston, Texas. The sample size was 160 maternal-infant dyads. Subjects were randomly assigned to either a control or experimental group and were observed for mother-infant interaction during two separate feedings using the Nursing Child Assessment Feeding Scale. Mothers in the experimental group were asked to perform the Mothers' Assessment of the Behavior of Her Infant on the third postpartum day between the first and second observation. The dependent variable was analyzed using analysis of variance for a two factor factorial with repeated measures on the last factor. Significant interaction effects were subjected to simple main effects analyses. Two of the four null hypotheses were rejected. Interactive synchrony scores of mothers in the experimental and control groups did not differ significantly before intervention. However, interactive scores of the mothers in the experimental group were significantly higher than interactive scores of the mothers in the control group after intervention. Interactive scores of the mothers in the control group did not significantly change between the first and second observations. Early identification of infant behavior characteristics and their contributions to the relationship will aide in the positive development of the mother-infant interaction. Teaching mothers to perform the MABI could be an intervention for promoting positive interactive synchrony between the mother and infant during the postpartum period.
Nugent, Katherine Elizabet (1987). The effect of performing the mother's assessment of the behavior of her infant on interactive synchrony. Texas A&M University. Texas A&M University. Libraries. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /DISSERTATIONS -26927.