Type of Document	Dissertation
Author	Daleo, Lisa
Author's Email Address	ldaleo@earthlink.net
URN	etd-022199-225853
Title	Relations Among Adolescent Motherhood, Caregiving Experience, and Perceptual and Caregiving Responses to Infant Cries
Degree	PhD
Department	Psychology
Advisory Committee	Advisor Name Title Robert Lickliter, Ph. D. Committee Chair Al Prestrude, Ph. D. Committee Member Mark Benson, Ph. D. Committee Member Martha Ann Bell, Ph. D. Committee Member Robin Cooper, Ph. D. Committee Member
Keywords	adolescent mothers high-risk cries caregiving responses Perceptual responses
Date of Defense	1998-12-02
Availability	restricted
Abstract Prospective analyses suggest that young mothers may not be capable of perceptually discriminating between different infant cry stimuli. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the perceptual and caregiving responses of adolescent mothers to different infant cry stimuli. Twenty-five primiparous adolescents and 39 nulliparous adolescents listened to segments of three different infant cry types that varied in the amount of high-pitched, hyperphonation contained in the acoustic structure. Participants rated their responses to the low- and high-risk cries on perceptual rating scales, and selected a caregiving behavior in response to these same cries. Analyses of Variance showed that both groups of participants perceived the infant cry segments as more arousing, annoying, distressing, loud, and sick-sounding as the amount of hyperphonation increased across cries. Results also showed that adolescent mothers did not perceive high-risk cries as more arousing, annoying, urgent, loud, and sick-sounding than adolescents who were not mothers. However, primiparous participants perceived hyperphonated and partially-hyperphonated cries as less annoying and less loud than nulliparous adolescents. This study did not find significant differences between primiparous adolescents' and nulliparous adolescents' caregiving experiences. Chi-square analyses indicated no significant differences between the participant groups' caregiving response choice frequencies to all three infant cry types.
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