Abusive and nonabusive mothers' ability to identify general and specific emotion signals of infants.

Slides depicting infants in 7 different emotion states were shown to 20 abusive mothers and to 20 matched, nonabusive mothers. The ability of these subjects to identify general emotional affect (positive and negative) and specific emotion signals was tested. Results indicated that abusive mothers were more likely than the comparison group to incorrectly identify specific emotion signals and to label negative affect as positive.