Relationships between Attributes of Mothers and Their Infants' IQ Scores

If the infant was spoken to less, touched less, and had less opportunity to explore the house, then he tended to score lower on the infant scale, and more social experience with people other than the parents tended to enhance scores on the Cattell infant test.

Abstract

BECKWITH, LEILA. Relationships between Attributes of Mothers and Their Infants' IQ Scores. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1971, 42, 1083-1097. The present study explores the specific environmental influences in the intellectual development of 24 adoptive infants living in middle-class families. The adoptive motlthers and their infants were observed in spontaneous interaction in their homes. The amount of maternal physical and verbal contact with the baby, how much the mother ignored the baby, the amount of opportunity given the baby to explore the house, the amount of experience with people other than the mother, and the adoptive and natural mother's socioeconomic status were related to the infant's Cattell IQ scores and Gesell gross motor scores. No relationship was found between infants' IQ scores and adoptive mothers' socioeconomic status. However, infants IQ scores did correlate with their natural mothers' socioeconomic class. How the adoptive mother behaved to her infant had an influence too. If the infant was spoken to less, touched less, and had less opportunity to explore the house, then he tended to score lower on the infant scale. Similarly, more social experience with people other than the parents tended to enhance scores on the Cattell infant test.