The Persistence of Infant Caregiving Behavior Under Disrupting Conditions

In infant caregiving situations, caregivers often experience frequent periods of extended or inconsolable crying. In these situations, ideally positive caregiving behaviors (rocking, feeding) will persist and not be replaced by negative behaviors (shaking, yelling at the baby). The current study is an initial exploration of persistence of positive caregiving behaviors from the perspective of behavioral momentum theory. Previous basic and translational research has indicated that behavior reinforced in a relatively rich (versus lean) context is more resistant to challenges. Adult participants interacted with simulation infants that cried and were asked to respond as they normally would to a baby. During baseline sessions, crying was turned off contingent on target behavior (rocking, feeding, playing) in lean and rich reinforcement sessions in two different research-lab settings. After each baseline, participants experienced a challenging situation. In Experiment 1, participants experienced extinction sessions in which no response terminated crying, and in Experiment 2, participants were asked to complete a competing task while caring for the infant simulator. The percentage of change in caregiving behaviors in the test sessions was compared across the lean and rich conditions in a within-subjects design. Four of six participants in Experiment 1 and two of six participants in Experiment 2 showed greater persistence during rich test sessions than lean. These results provide an initial demonstration that behavioral persistence of caregiving behavior may be sensitive to contextual reinforcement variables, and the differences observed across disruption conditions highlight the importance of considering both reinforcement history and the broader context in which infant caregiving occurs.