Parental synchrony and nurturance as targets in an attachment based intervention: building upon Mary Ainsworth's insights about mother–infant interaction
Open accessAbstract
As an astute observer of parent-infant interaction, Mary Ainsworth described and assessed facets of maternal sensitivity, including responsiveness to conditions of infant distress and non-distress. This paper considers the importance of distinguishing between parental sensitivity to children's distress cues (which we refer to as nurturance) and parental sensitivity to children's non-distress cues (which we refer to as synchrony). Observations of parents in our intervention, Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC), have led us to believe that distress and non-distress represent distinct contexts in which parents can be differentially sensitive or insensitive in responding. Thus, we have conceptualized nurturance and synchrony as distinct targets of the ABC intervention and, in deciding how to assess parental sensitivity, we have chosen measures that distinguish between nurturance and synchrony. This paper describes the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches we have taken to assess parental sensitivity, including diary methodology that we developed for assessing parental nurturance and global measures that we have used for assessing parental synchrony. Finally, a frequency-based coding system is described that we developed for assessing parental nurturance and synchrony from videotaped intervention sessions.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Physiological co-regulation through mother-child interactions increases maternal responsiveness to infant signals and broad maternal sensitivity, which are key factors in secure infant-mother attachment.
“physiological co-regulation (or synchrony) through mother–child interactions increases maternal responsiveness to infant signals and broad maternal sensitivity [84], which are key factors in the development of secure infant–mother attachment”
From Benefits of a bedtime routine in young children: Sleep, development, and beyond. (2018) · cites this paper as [86]
The Synchrony section defines synchrony as a parent's contingent responsiveness to a child's cues and describes physiological co-regulation as a hypothesized mediator of children's regulatory outcomes. It does not say that co-regulation increases maternal responsiveness or broad maternal sensitivity. The Abstract links maternal sensitivity to attachment security, while the Nurturance section identifies responsiveness to infant distress—not synchrony—as particularly relevant to secure attachment. Page numbers are unavailable in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.87)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredBreastfeeding may also facilitate greater parent-child bonding and attachment, though less research is available on this topic.
“Breastfeeding may also facilitate increased parent–child bonding and attachment, although there is less available research on this topic.”
From Benefits of a bedtime routine in young children: Sleep, development, and beyond. (2018) · cites this paper as [86]
The Nurturance section links parents’ responses to infant distress with attachment security, but does not discuss breastfeeding. A search for breastfeeding and feeding-related terms found only a mention of feeding among the factors Ainsworth observed; our copy does not address whether breastfeeding facilitates bonding or whether research on that question is limited. (LLM, conf=0.76)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredPrevious research has differentiated types of caregiving based on the context of the child's emotional state, that is, distress versus non-distress.
“Previous research (Bernard et al., 2013; Davidov & Grusec, 2006; E. Leerkes, Blankson, & O’Brien, 2009; E. M. Leerkes et al., 2012) has differentiated types of caregiving based on the context of the child’s emotional state (i.e., distress versus child non-distress).”
From The neglect–enrichment continuum: Characterizing variation in early caregiving environments (2019) · cites this paper as Bernard et al., 2013
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 44 · Cited by 94
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Leichtman MD Pillemer DB Wang Q Koreishi A Han JJ When Baby Maisy came to school: Mothers’ interview styles and preschoolers’ event memories Cognitive Development 2000 15 99 114 doi: 10.1016/S0885-2014(00)00019-8 · DOI
- Authors
- Bernard, K., Meade, E., & Dozier, M.
- Affiliations
- University of Delaware (US)
- Corresponding author
- Bernard, Kristin
- Venue
- Attachment & Human Development
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2013-11
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 5-6
- Pages
- 507-523
- ISSN
- 1461-6734 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-2988
- PMC
- PMC3855268
- OpenAlex
- W2170685721
- Cited by
- 94
- References
- 44
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 4
- FWCI
- 7.00
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Attachment & Human Development (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health
- National Institute of Mental Health (R01MH084135, R01MH052135, R01MH074374)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Attachment and Relationship Dynamics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Psychoanalysis and Psychopathology Research
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Pharmacy › Infant Health and Development
- Keywords
- parental nurturance, maternal sensitivity, mother-infant interaction, Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up, attachment-based intervention, parental responsiveness
- MeSH terms
- Child, Empathy, Female, Humans, Maternal Behavior, Mother-Child Relations, Stress, Psychological, Observational Studies as Topic
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
