Children at risk: performance of three-year-olds and their mentally ill and well mothers on an interaction task.

Fifteen mothers previously hospitalized for mental illness (psychosis) and 15 well mothers were observed with their 3-year-old children. While mentally ill mothers expressed less positive affect than well mothers, there were no other respects in which the two groups of mothers and their children differed. There were differences in the pattern of intercorrelations among these interaction variables between the two groups, which appear to reflect differences in the degree of flexibility between mothers in the two groups.