Infant behaviors during the newborn period were observed in response to the manipulation of maternal behaviors. Data analyses revealed that this sample of newborns was responsive to increases in maternal behaviors, particularly maternal vocal behaviors. Infants looked more when mothers increased their vocal stimulation of the newborns, but only if the infants' baseline levels of looking at mother were low. When baseline levels of looking at mother were high and mothers increased their vocal stimulation, and maintained the increase for an extended period of time, infants looked less at mothers; that is, the newborns gaze avoided more. In addition, maternal tactile stimulation and infant tactile behaviors were differentiated in accordance with the factor of infant gender.

Research with older infants indicates that maternal stimulating behaviors may have the effect of either increasing or decreasing infant visual attentiveness, dependent primarily upon the type of maternal behavior examined. Those maternal behaviors which serve to decrease attentiveness have been termed overstimulating and seem to produce a state of overload for the infant. This effect assumes particular importance since visual communication between mothers and infants may serve as an important context for the elaboration of other types of communicative behaviors. In addition, gaze avoidance in infants and young children has been related to a variety of pathological anomalies. There have been no studies, however, which have examined the impact of levels of maternal stimulation on the visual behaviors of neonates in the context of nonfeeding social interaction.

Mothers in the present study were asked to increase either their visual behaviors, vocal behaviors, or both, in an attempt to ascertain whether alterations in these aspects of their behavior would have an impact on neonatal visual behaviors. Of particular interest was whether it is possible to elicit neonatal gaze avoidance through maternal overstimulation. In addition, this design allowed examination of the specific types of maternal behavior changes which might produce an effect.