Enhancing early parenting in the community: Preliminary results from a learning collaborative approach to scale up Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up

Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC) is a promising home-visiting intervention promoting sensitive caregiving and secure parent-child attachment in families with young children. The goal of this study was to examine a learning collaborative approach to disseminating ABC in a community setting. Training outcomes (e.g., trainee completion, satisfaction, effectiveness of training methods) and intervention outcomes (e.g., parent behavior, parent beliefs, child socioemotional development) were examined. Eighteen practitioners participated in the ABC learning collaborative; 13 completed training. Quantitative and qualitative measures indicated that trainees were satisfied with their experience and valued the unique collaboration opportunities offered by the learning collaborative. In addition, trainees served 67 families in the community, 37 of whom completed all sessions of ABC. The study was conducted in the United States. Racial demographics of the children in the sample included: 56.7% White, 22.4% Black/African-American, 17.9% Bi- or Multi-racial, and 3.0% unknown. Regarding ethnicity, 80.6% were Non-Hispanic/Latino, 10.4% were Hispanic/Latino, and 9.0% were unknown. Caregivers who completed ABC showed more sensitive parenting behavior and reported positive changes in their perceived self-efficacy and their beliefs around infant crying. Children who received ABC showed increased socioemotional functioning. Results demonstrate successful dissemination of ABC in the community using a learning collaborative approach.

Parental sensitivity, family alliance and infants' vagal tone: Influences of early family interactions on physiological emotion regulation

In this study, we investigated the influence of parental sensitivity and family alliance on infants' vagal tone, considered as a physiological indicator of emotion regulation. Studies on mother-infant interactions have shown that vagal tone can be influenced by the quality of the interaction, such as interacting with a sensitive mother. To date, no study has investigated the influence of paternal sensitivity or family alliance on infants' vagal tone. We hypothesized that maternal sensitivity, paternal sensitivity, and family alliance would be associated with infants' vagal tone during dyadic and triadic interactions. We also explored if family alliance would act as a moderator on the association between parental sensitivity and vagal tone and if the sensitivity of both parents would act as a moderator on the association between family alliance and vagal tone. This study took place in Switzerland and included 82 families with their 3-4-month-old infants. Results showed that maternal sensitivity and family alliance were associated with infants' vagal tone, but paternal sensitivity was not. We found no significant moderation effect. However, result tendencies suggested that the contribution of paternal sensitivity to infants' emotion regulation could be influenced by family alliance, whereas maternal sensitivity and family alliance have a unique contribution.

Parent-Child Relationship Scale (P-CRS): A valid and clinically sensitive tool for assessing the parent-child relationship

The present study measured the efficacy of the Parent-Child Relationship Scale (P-CRS) in assessing the relationship between parents and children. The aims of the study were to explore how the scale scores change in relation to age and sex of the children, evaluate its ability to capture relational difficulties, and investigating its usefulness to assess the parent-child relationship in the context of certain psychopathological conditions. A total of 322 clinicians rated 542 mother-child dyads (92% Italian, 8% other nationality). The clinical group was comprised of 267 children with confirmed clinical conditions. The control group was comprised of 275 children with typical development, rated by clinicians in their private offices after four to five evaluative sessions. Descriptive statistics were captured and ANOVAs and linear regression analyses were performed to investigate in both groups the efficacy of the scale in assessing the parent-child relationship. Finally, to test P-CRS accuracy, optimal cutoff scores for each subscale were computed using the ROC method. The findings provide evidence for the P-CRS ability to capture relational difficulties in both groups, showing its utility as screening tool. Thus, the results support that P-CRS can be used for exploring how different relationship patterns can occur in different clinical conditions.

Early life predictors of callous-unemotional and psychopathic traits

Psychopathy is a disorder that occurs primarily in males. Offenders with psychopathic traits are responsible for a disproportionate amount of crime in society, particularly violent crime. Early childhood is a time when individual differences in empathy and guilt-key indicators of the construct of psychopathy-are first evident. A growing number of longitudinal studies have begun to investigate how factors in infancy and early childhood predict psychopathic-like traits in later childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. These studies have suggested that parenting styles during infancy (parental sensitivity, maternal harsh intrusion, commenting on the emotional state of the child) as well as attachment styles are predictive of later psychopathic-like traits. In addition, child characteristics such as temperament and the functioning of biological systems such as the autonomic nervous system and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis are predictive. Overall, studies have suggested that at least some of the origins of psychopathic traits are present in infancy and early childhood, which is consistent with the perspective of psychopathy as a neurodevelopmental disorder. A recent evolutionary-developmental model provides hypotheses regarding how psychopathy may develop and why it is more common in males than females. This model, and its implications for intervention, is discussed in the context of the longitudinal studies that have been conducted on psychopathy.

MATERNAL INTERACTION QUALITY MODERATES EFFECTS OF PRENATAL MATERNAL EMOTIONAL SYMPTOMS ON GIRLS' INTERNALIZING PROBLEMS

The role of mother-infant interaction quality is studied in the relation between prenatal maternal emotional symptoms and child behavioral problems. Healthy pregnant, Dutch women (N = 96, M = 31.6, SD = 3.3) were allocated to the "exposed group" (n = 46), consisting of mothers with high levels of prenatal feelings of anxiety and depression, or the "low-exposed group" (n = 50), consisting of mothers with normal levels of depressive or anxious symptoms during pregnancy. When the children (49 girls, 47 boys) were 23 to 60 months of age (M = 39.0, SD = 9.6), parents completed the Child Behavior Checklist (T.M. Achenbach & L.A. Rescorla, ), and mother-child interaction quality during a home visit was rated using the Emotional Availability Scales. There were no differences in mother-child interaction quality between the prenatally exposed and low-exposed groups. Girls exposed to high prenatal emotional symptoms showed more internalizing problems, if maternal interaction quality was less optimal. No significant effects were found for boys.