Infants' interactions with professional caregivers at 3 and 6 months of age: A longitudinal study

Abstract

Abstract This study longitudinally investigated the quality and stability of 64 infants' interactions with their professional caregivers in child care centers at 3 and 6 months of age, i.e., across the first 3 months after they entered child care. It was also examined whether the infants' negative emotionality (as rated by the mother) predicted the quality of the caregiver-infant interaction. The interactive behavior of the professional caregivers (sensitivity, cooperation) and the infants (responsiveness, involvement) was rated from videotapes recorded in three different caregiving situations, lasting about 25 min in total. In contrast to our expectation, the quality of the caregiver-infant interaction did not significantly increase across the first 3 months in child care. As expected, significant rank order stability was found for the quality of the caregivers' behavior over time. Also in accordance with our expectations, infants with higher negative emotionality scores experienced less sensitivity and cooperation in interactions with their primary professional caregivers at both ages. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Infant; Child care center; Negative emotionality; Caregiver-infant interaction; Longitudinal Nonparental child care is nowadays an ordinary part of life for many children in most western countries. Infants often attend child care centers from a very early age onwards and for substantial amounts of time. Despite the general acknowledgement that well-attuned interactions with adult caregivers are of vital importance for a healthy development of very young infants, surprisingly little is known about the quality of the interactions these infants have with their professional caregivers in child care. The present study aimed to shed more light upon this matter. We observed the quality of infants' interactions with their primary professional caregivers in child care centers at 3 months of age when the infants had first entered child care, and again 3 months later when the infants were 6 months of age. We examined (1) whether the quality of the caregiver-infant interactions changed or remained stable across the first 3 months after entering child care, and (2) whether the infants' negative emotionality predicted the quality of these early caregiver-infant interactions