School of Psychology, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK.
Department of Psychology, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.
J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2021 Dec;62(12):1491-1493. doi: 10.1111/jcpp.13439. Epub 2021 May 11.
Davis and Kramer (2021) in their commentary on our study (Bilgin & Wolke, 2020) state that we 'argue that leaving an infant to "cry it out", rather than responding to the child's cries, had no adverse effects on mother-infant attachment at 18 months' (Davis & Kramer, 2021, p. 1). Instead, we wrote that 'contemporary practice by some parents to occasionally or often "leaving infant to cry it out" during the first 6 months was not associated with adverse behavioural development and attachment at 18 months' (p. 8). Based on the empirical findings of our observation study, we suggested that 'increased use of "leaving to cry it out" with age may indicate differential responding by mothers to aid the development of infant self-regulation' (p. 8). Indeed, in an editorial of our study, the joint editor of this journal concluded that 'Bilgin and Wolke responsibly conclude that there is little reason to make definitive pronouncements to parents of young infants about how much to let them cry it out, given that both the attachment theory (responding promptly early promotes security) and learning theory (ignoring crying prevents dependency) formulations were unsupported by their findings' (Zeanah, 2020, p. 1172).
戴维斯和克莱默（2021）在他们对我们研究的评论（比尔金和沃尔克，2020）中指出，我们“认为让婴儿‘哭出来’，而不是对孩子的哭声做出反应，不会对 18 个月大的母婴依恋产生不良影响”（戴维斯和克莱默，2021，第 1 页）。相反，我们写道，“一些父母在头 6 个月偶尔或经常‘让婴儿哭出来’的当代做法与 18 个月时的不良行为发展和依恋无关”（第 8 页）。基于我们观察研究的实证发现，我们提出“随着年龄的增长，增加使用‘让婴儿哭出来’可能表明母亲以不同的方式回应，以帮助婴儿自我调节的发展”（第 8 页）。事实上，在我们研究的一篇社论中，该杂志的联合编辑总结说，“比尔金和沃尔克负责任地得出结论，对于年轻婴儿的父母来说，没有多少理由对让他们哭多少做出明确的声明，因为依恋理论（及早迅速回应会促进安全性）和学习理论（忽视哭泣会防止依赖性）的表述都没有得到他们发现的支持”（泽纳，2020，第 1172 页）。
