Cognitive Process of Fathers in Response to Crying Infants

Abstract

The study aimed to examine fathers' cognitive process in response to crying infants and investigate how the process changes as two-month-old babies progress in age to be four-months-old. Joint interviews were conducted with 10 pairs of parents when their infants were aged two and then four months. The analysis targeted 60 episodes. The fathers' cognitive processes in response to crying infants were classified into the following patterns: (i) cognitive process of elimination, (ii) iterative cognitive process, (iii) initial interpretation in the cognitive process, (iv) routine cognitive process, (v) trial-and-error cognitive process, and (vi) no cognitive processing. Similar to the case with the mothers, fathers interpreted the cause of infants crying based on “perception” and “situation.” Therefore, the study found that fathers exhibited characteristic patterns in cognitive processing toward infants aged two and then four months. The results suggested that fathers' cognitive processes change (i.e., from (i) cognitive process of elimination to (iii) initial interpretation in the cognitive process and (v) trial-and-error cognitive process) in response to cries of infants aged two and four months.