IMMEDIATE AND SUSTAINED EFFECTS OF MATERNAL MEDIATING BEHAVIORS ON YOUNG-CHILDREN

Sixty-eight low-SES Israeli women and their 4-year-old children partic ipated in a follow-up study of the impact of training mothers to optim ize their infants' development through theory-driven mediational strat egies. Mother-and-infant pairs were randomly divided into two groups, an experimental group (n = 48) and a control group (n = 20). The exper imental-group mothers had been instructed to improve the quality of th eir mediation through an increase in frequency of the following five b asic variables assessed as criteria of quality of maternal mediation: (a) focusing (intentional focusing of attention), (b) affecting (expre ssion of affect and excitement), (c) expanding (explaining or associat ing with experiences beyond the immediate context), (d) encouraging (p raising or encouraging), and (e) regulating (controlling actions in fo rm, time, and space or planning and sequencing). The control group was given information on milestones in early development and on the favor able conditions for it. The effects of these interventions on the moth ers and children were assessed 1 and 3 years following the interventio n. An increase in maternal mediation behaviors following the intervent ion was found in the experimental group and remained significant at th e 3-year follow-up; children in the experimental group spontaneously n amed more things, expressed more excitement, asked more questions, and showed more rewarding behavior towards their mothers. These children had higher scores on the PPVT, and scored higher on verbal abstract re asoning tasks that did the control group children. Maternal mediation behaviors were found to be significantly related to specific children' s behaviors and cognitive outcome measures.