Infant and parent factors associated with early maternal sensitivity: A caregiver-attachment systems approach

doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2006.11.010

Infant Behavior and Development

Volume 30, Issue 1, February 2007, Pages 114-126

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.infbeh.2006.11.010 Get rights and content

Abstract

We examined variations in maternal sensitivity at 6 months of child age as a function of child negativity and maternal physiology. We expected maternal vagal withdrawal in response to infant negative affect to facilitate the maintenance of sensitivity, but only for mothers of securely attached children. One hundred and forty-eight infant-mother dyads were observed in multiple contexts at 6 months of child age, and associations among maternal and child variables were examined with respect to 12-month attachment quality. Mothers of later securely attached children were more sensitive than mothers of avoidant children. However, sensitivity decreased for all mothers at high levels of infant negative affect. Furthermore, for mothers of avoidant children, vagal withdrawal was associated with sensitivity to child distress. No association was found between vagal withdrawal and sensitivity for mothers of securely attached children. This suggests that mothers of avoidant children may be uniquely challenged by the affective demands of their infants.

Section snippets

Child factors, maternal sensitivity, and attachment security

Bowlby's (1969) attachment theory highlighted the importance of shifts between positive and negative affect as the primary mechanism of communication for infants. Accordingly, while positive affect promotes affiliation and the acquisition of competence through play and exploration, shifts to negative affect serve as potent signals of distress and the need for comfort from the caregiver. The caregiving system must adequately detect and attend to these shifts in order to support the development

Mother's self-regulation in response to infant distress

Bowlby (1969) posited that negative affect is the most potent tool of communication available to the infant because of its distinctness and saliency for the mother in almost any situation. Although being aroused by a crying infant is certainly an adaptive feature of the caregiving system, infant distress can also be quite dysregulating for mothers, especially when persistent and intense. Consider the current definitions of parental sensitivity, including attentiveness and awareness of child

Hypotheses

The goals of the current research were (1) to determine whether associations between child negative affect and maternal sensitivity at 6 months of child age were constant across later attachment classifications, and (2) to determine whether mother's physiological regulation, as indexed by vagal withdrawal, mediates or moderates associations between infant negativity and maternal sensitivity. Specifically, the first hypothesis predicted that infant negative affect would be more strongly

Participants

The participants in the current study were 173 families recruited by the Durham Child Health and Development Study. For this study, recruitment procedures specified an approximately equal number of European- and African-American families sampled from both lower- and higher-income groups. The family's race was determined by the race of the mother (or primary caregiver), while income status was determined by whether families were above or below 200 percent of the federally established poverty

Results

Results are presented in three sections. The first section provides descriptive statistics and correlations among model parameters used in the current analyses. This information is presented for the sample as a whole as well as across attachment classifications. The second section examines differences in model parameters across contexts of observation and across attachment classifications. The third section uses hierarchical linear modeling to examine the association between infant negative

Discussion

As part of the broader caregiving system, sensitive parenting must be considered as not just a trait characteristic of the mother, but rather a fluid array of behaviors that responds to the changing physical and emotional needs of her infant. Bowlby (1969) suggested that the parent's caregiving system must be in alignment with the needs of the child's attachment system in order to facilitate the formation of a secure attachment relationship. The sensitive parent must be able to recognize these

Acknowledgements

This study was supported by The North Carolina Child Development Research Collaborative which is funded by the National Science Foundation through a Children's Research Initiative grant #BCS-0126475. The authors would like to thank all of the parents who participated in the Durham Child Health and Development Study and the research assistants for their valuable help in collecting this data. Special thanks go to Melissa Barnett and Beth Corrington for their contribution to the coding of the

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Citation Excerpt :
Most of the findings from Lab-TAB suggested maternal sensitivity as a significant predictor of infant regulation in distress situations, including fear and frustration (Bozicevic et al., 2016; Frick, Forslund, Fransson, et al., 2018; Frick, Forslund, & Brocki, 2018; Gartstein, Hancock, & Iverson, 2018; Halligan et al., 2013), whereas harsh parenting predicted increases in infant distress (Scaramella et al., 2008). Although this pattern was also observed through further distress eliciting tasks in some studies (Crockenberg, Leerkes, & Jó, 2008; Leerkes, Su, Calkins, Supple, & O’Brien, 2016; Roque & Veríssimo, 2011), a significant number of studies revealed mixed findings or failed to find an association between maternal behavior and infant affect when using the SFP and other distress-eliciting tasks (Augustine & Leerkes, 2019; Kim, Stifter, Philbrook, & Teti, 2014; Leerkes, Blankson, & O’Brien, 2009; McMahon & Newey, 2018; Mesman, Linting, Joosen, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & Van Ijzendoorn, 2013; Mills-Koonce et al., 2007; Norcross, Leerkes, & Zhou, 2017; O’Neal, Weston, Brooks-Gunn, Berlin, & Atapattu, 2017; Planalp, O’Neill, & Braungart-Rieker, 2019; Swingler, Perry, Calkins, & Bell, 2014). Some of them showed a significant relationship only for temperamentally difficult infants, some in certain situations (e.g., during a book reading activity), and some for specific subscales, such as for maternal non-hostility or negative maternal behavior.
The formation of early regulatory behavior during the first years is an important developmental task and predictive for self-regulatory abilities in later life. Although parental behavior is thought to be highly influential in this developmental trajectory, associations between infant regulatory behavior and parental behavior have been diverse. The current paper systematically reviews the empirical research on the relationship between behavioral indicators of infant regulation–temperamental characteristics, sleeping, crying, feeding–and parental behavior during the first two years of life. After screening 4254 articles obtained from Web of Science and PsycINFO, 107 studies were included in the systematic review. The studies fell short of integrating negative parental behavior, paternal variables and further demographic information into the research and did not reveal consistent findings. However, the studies indicated a positive relationship between parental behavior and infant regulation with differences according to age and measurement method. It appears that the use of semi-structured methods to measure infant regulation is most appropriate during the first year of life, whereas the use of structured measures is more advisable during the second year of life. In contrast, parental reports measuring infant regulation failed to show significant findings with parenting behavior at any given time. The association was more powerful when infant regulation was predicted by parental behavior than vice versa. However, the number of studies regarding the latter direction was limited. This review, thus, underlines the importance of using different measurement methods according to age, and discusses the ways to improve future research.
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: ^☆ Portions of this paper were presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development, Atlanta, GA, April 2005.

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Infant and parent factors associated with early maternal sensitivity: A caregiver-attachment systems approach

Abstract

Section snippets

Child factors, maternal sensitivity, and attachment security

Mother's self-regulation in response to infant distress

Hypotheses

Participants

Results

Discussion

Acknowledgements

Psychoneuroendocrinology

Infant Behavior and Development

Infant Behavior and Development

Journal of the American Academy of Child psychiatry

Hormones and Behavior

Adult attachment, parent emotion, and observed parenting behavior: Mediator and moderator models

Child Development

Multiple regression: Testing and interpreting interactions

Patterns of attachment

Vagal tone, development, and Gray's motivational theory: Toward an integrated model of autonomic nervous system functioning in psychopathology

Development and Psychopathology

Parental sensitivity, infant affect, and affect regulation: Predictors of attachment

Child Development

Cardiac vagal tone indices of temperamental reactivity and behavioral regulation in young children

Developmental Psychobiology

Disorganized/disoriented attachment relationships in maltreated infants

Developmental Psychology

The nature of the child ties

Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences

Prediction of infant-mother and infant-father attachment

Developmental Psychology

Infant irritability, mother responsiveness, and social support influences on the security of infant-mother attachment

Child Development

Sensitivity and attachment: A meta-analysis on parental antecedents of infant attachment

Child Development

Infant-mother attachment: Factors related to its development and changes over time

Child Development

The long-term consequences of infant day-care and mother-infant attachment

Child Development

Infant's affective response in the strange situation: Effects of prematurity and of quality of attachment

Child Development

Maternal and infant temperamental predictors of attachment: A meta-analytic review

Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology

Infant stress and parent responsiveness: Regulation of physiology and behavior during still-face and reunion

Child Development

Infant temperament and cardiac vagal tone: Assessments at twelve weeks of age

Child Development

Emotional development in children with different attachment histories: The first three years

Child Development

Effortful control in early childhood: Continuity and change, antecedents and implications for social development

Developmental Psychology

The relationship of resting autonomic activity to motor impulsivity

Research Publications and Associations for Research in Nervous and Mental Disease