A comparison of the patterns of mother-baby interaction for a group of crying, irritable babies and a group of more amenable babies.

Ten babies aged 9-14 months, with a previous history of excessive crying behaviour and sleeplessness were matched with similar more contented babies. The twenty mother-baby pairs were observed individually in a 30-minute play session to test the hypothesis that prolonged crying behaviour of babies over several months would have an aversive effect on their mothers to the extent that even after this behaviour had ceased the mothers would interact with the babies less and these pairs would be less responsive to each other's overtures than the non-crying mother-baby pairs. Significant differences were seen between the two groups, 'the criers' group of pairs interacting less (P less than 0.01) and were less responsive to their partners (P less than 0.01); the most marked difference being the percentage of overtures made by the 'cryer' babies which were not responded to by their mothers (P = 0.001).