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MOTHER’S ATTENTION TO A BABY DOLL EVOKES JEALOUSY PROTESTS IN THEIR YEAR-OLD INFANTS

Sybil Hart

University of Miami School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics (D-820), P. 0. Box 016820, Miami, Florida, 33101

This study evaluated the effects of mothers’ and strangers’ differential attention toward social and non-social objects. Subjects were 76 12-month olds, observed in four triadic contexts: infant-stranger-book, infant-mother-book, infant-stranger-stranger-doll, and infant-mother-doll, presented in four orders. Thus, infants were ignored while mother and stranger, in turn, expressed positive cues toward a cookbook or role played with a doll as if it were a real infant. Infants demonstrated increased protest and proximity to mother during the infant-mother-doll condition. This pattern of behavioral responding was interpreted as jealousy protest behavior.

Further analyses examined responses of a subsample (N=32) of infants whose mothers reported depression symptoms. During the doll conditions, infants of non-depressed mothers demonstrated greater rates of protest, negative vocalization and proximal behavior toward the mother; infants of depressed mothers showed greater proximity to the stranger. Protest behaviors were not predicted by siblingship. Evidence suggests that jealousy protest is a normal developmental phenomenon, an emotional response which evolves during the first year as a function of attachment and is well-established before the arrival of siblings.