Impact of a Program to Facilitate Mother-Infant Communication in High-Risk Families of High-Risk Infants

Abstract

This article presents follow-up results of the Mother-Infant Communication Project (MICP), a program designed to facilitate caregivers' uses of communicative interaction strategies with their infants labeled high-risk. Three groups of mother-infant dyads were included in the study: a group receiving home visits only, a group receiving home visits plus a group experience, and a comparison group. Results showed MICP mothers overall were significantly better than comparison group mothers on the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment (HOME) Scale. In addition, children of MICP mothers who received a group experience in addition to home visits performed significantly better on the Receptive-Expressive Emergent Language (REEL) Scale at 18 months than both the home visits only group and the comparison group. Implications of the findings for intervention efforts are discussed.

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