What is this article about?

This article is about parental sensitivity to their infants in different contexts and to what degree the context of the situation plays a role in the displayed sensitivity.

Parental sensitivity is defined by the parents’ ability to interpret and react according to their children’s signals, resulting in positive outcomes in the child, including attachment security and adaptive cognitive development. Parental sensitivity is usually measured by short observations in a broad range of settings. It is not yet examined how the different settings might influence parental sensitivity, even though many different settings have been used for observation so far. Little is known about the stability and consistency of parental sensitivity across different contexts. Furthermore, the question arises if mothers are more sensitive to their children’s needs compared to fathers.

This is what this study will focus on.

How has the study been conducted?

Dutch expecting parents were asked to participate in this study. 132 couples joined the prenatal assessment, 119 a follow-up 4-months assessment.

During the 4-months assessment, both parents have been observed separately, but with the exact same amount of observations.

The parents were video taped with their infant during 4 settings. A free play on the parent’s lap or on the floor, a SFP baseline, a SFP reunion and a routine caregiving task.

SFP is a so called Still-Face Paradigm, a stress inducing factor in interaction with infants.

During the first task, parents played with their infant for 5 minutes, without a toy. During the SFP tasks, parent and infant first interacted as they would usually do, followed by a “still face episode”, in which the parent kept a neutral face and gave no response to the infant. After this "still face episode" a reunion followed, in which the parent interacted with the infant again. The last task consisted of a caregiving task, such as bathing or changing diapers.

What are the results of this study and how can they be interpreted?

Overall, parents who were more sensitive in one context, also showed higher sensitivity in the other three contexts. The highest correlation was shown between the two SFP tasks, but this is logical since both tasks are part of the same overall task. There was no significant difference in sensitivity between mother and father in all four settings.

The mean score of sensitivity during the caregiving task was higher compared to during free play. Sensitivity was the lowest during the SFP tasks.

It can be assumed that the amount of experience with a task influences the parents’ sensitivity. In less experienced contexts it is more difficult to pick up and correctly interpret the signs of the infants. Furthermore, this study showed that there are no differences in sensitivity between mothers and fathers.