The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Infant Irritability, Mother Responsiveness, and Social Support Influences on the Security of Infant-Mother Attachment
Abstract
This study investigates the influence of infant irritability, maternal responsiveness, and social support on the development of secure and anxious infant-mother attachments at 1 year. Infant irritability was assessed during the neonatal period using the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale, maternal responsiveness to crying was measured during observations at 3 months, and social support was based on interviews also conducted at 3 months. Security of attachment measures were derived from strange-situation videotapes. Results indicate that social support is the best predictor of secure attachment, and that it is most important for mothers with irritable babies. Maternal unresponsiveness is associated with resistance during reunion episodes and appears to be a mechanism through which anxious attachment develops. Some evidence suggests that social support may mitigate the effects of unresponsive mothering by providing the infant with a responsive substitute. Results are discussed in terms of a transactional/contextual model of development.
Overview
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“Two reports by Crockenberg (1981) and van den Boom (1994) that highly irritable infants tend to receive less sensitive care and are at greater risk for developing insecure relationships to their caregiver were especially compelling in this regard.”
From Infant and parent factors associated with early maternal sensitivity: A caregiver-attachment systems approach (2007) · cites this paper as Crockenberg (1981)
In the citing paper
“Their findings suggest that sensitive parenting might be challenged and reduced by infant negativity, but enhanced when the child positively stimulates the mother and responds to her bids for interaction”
From Infant and parent factors associated with early maternal sensitivity: A caregiver-attachment systems approach (2007) · cites this paper as Crockenberg (1981)
Citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Resilience in the Face of Adversity
Rutter, M. L. (1985) · The British Journal of Psychiatry · doi:10.1192/bjp.147.6.598 · Cited by 3,689
“Relationships outside the marriage may also have an important buffering effect, leading to better parenting in spite of concurrent life stressors (Crockenberg, 1981; Crnic et a!, 1983).”
BackgroundParental Socialization of Emotion
Eisenberg, N., Cumberland, A. J., & Spinrad, T. L. (1998) · Psychological Inquiry · doi:10.1207/s15327965pli0904_1 · Cited by 2,925
“…soothability) or infants’ emotional reactivity in experimental contexts predicts subsequent attachment behaviors or status (Calkins & Fox, 1992; Crockenberg, 1981), as well as mothers’ contingent behavior and social behavior during interactions with infants at 6 or 12 months of age (Klein,…”
BackgroundSensitivity and attachment: A meta-analysis on parental antecedents of infant attachment
De Wolff, M. S., & van Ijzendoorn, M. H. (1997) · Child Development · doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.1997.tb04218.x · Cited by 2,526
Cox, M. J., & Paley, B. (1997) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.48.1.243 · Cited by 1,939
Attachment and development: A prospective, longitudinal study from birth to adulthood
Sroufe, L. A. (2005) · Attachment & Human Development · doi:10.1080/14616730500365928 · Cited by 1,685
“However, in contrast to previous studies finding that newborn difficulties are over-ridden in a middle-class sample (Crockenberg, 1981), we found that non-optimal neurological status on the Brazelton neonatal exam did predict anxious/ resistant attachment in our risk sample.”
Result
Metadata
- Authors
- Crockenberg, S. B.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Davis (US)
- Corresponding author
- Crockenberg, Susan B.
- Venue
- Child Development
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 1981-09
- Volume
- 52
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 857
- ISSN
- 0009-3920 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1993089994
- Cited by
- 777
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 45 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 12 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 16 · 2013: 21 · 2012: 18
- FWCI
- 29.17
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Child Development (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Attachment and Relationship Dynamics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health › Infant Health and Development
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
- Keywords
- infant irritability, maternal responsiveness, social support, infant-mother attachment, secure attachment, attachment anxiety, neonatal crying, Strange Situation Procedure, transactional model of development
- MeSH terms
- Crying, Female, Humans, Infant, Newborn, Male, Mother-Child Relations, Object Attachment, Personality, Social Behavior, Social Environment
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
