Modification of mother-child interaction processes in families with children at-risk for mental retardation.

An intervention study designed to investigate the effects of maternal behavior on children's cognitive and language functioning was conducted with 40 disadvantaged preschool children at risk for mental retardation and 20 control children. Intervention was based in part upon Sigel's distancing theory, with 20 mothers encouraged to increase inductive, responsive, and complex behavior and the other 20, only inductive and responsive behavior. Results indicated that both procedures were effective in increasing targeted maternal and child behavior; control measures remained stable over sessions. Posttest results suggested that training procedures significantly increased treated children's cognitive skills compared to the control children; the treated children who were encouraged to increase the complexity of behavior outperformed the others. Training generalized to the home environment. Implications of the results for early intervention were discussed.