Adult attention to infants in a newborn nursery.

Six 3-hour observations of adult attention to infants in a newborn nursery were conducted to describe the amount and type of attention received by the infants and to determine if individual differences among infants were related to this attention. Most infants spent the majority of the observation time between feedings in the nursery and received attention from an adult in the nursery an average of 5.5% of the time. More infant crying was associated with longer adult attention, although this effect was largely attributable to a small group of particularly irritable infants in which circumcised males were overrepresented. A number of infant characteristics, including age, sex, race, physical attractiveness, degree of prematurity, crying, and eye opening, were associated with the content of the interaction between nurses' aides and newborns. These observations are discussed with respect to hospital practices concerning care of newborns and the potential effects on newborns of rooming-in with their mothers.