Poster #136 - Developmental trajectories of sensitive maternal behaviors across the first year of life

• In Event: 1-061 - Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Section - Parenting & Parent-Child Relationships

Integrative Statement

Typically, maternal sensitivity remains relatively stable or increases slightly across the first year of life (Feldman, 2010; Ferber, Feldman, & Makhoul, 2008; Hirsh-Pasek & Burchinal, 2006). However, there is evidence that the individual behaviors that underlie the construct of maternal sensitivity may follow distinct developmental trajectories. For example, one study found that affectionate touch decreased across the first year of life (Ferber et al., 2008). Furthermore, Jahromi, Putnam, and Stifter (2004) reported that maternal soothing behavior to infant distress changes with infant age in response to an inoculation stressor task, emphasizing touch at two months and vocalization at six months. The current study uses growth curve analysis to examine individual developmental trajectories of specific behaviors associated with maternal sensitivity.

To address this goal, data were drawn from the Las Madres Nuevas (LMN) Project, a longitudinal study that follows 322 Mexican-American mothers and their infants. As part of the larger parent study, home visits were conducted at three, four and a half, and six months, during which mothers and their infants completed a free play interaction task. To minimize participant burden, the study followed a “planned missingness” design (Little & Rhemtulla, 2013) for the home visits in which two-thirds of the sample were randomly assigned to the 3-, 4.5, and 6-month visits (i.e., each participant “missed” one of the three planned missing data collection periods). At 12 months, the free play task was completed at the lab. These tasks were video recorded and later coded for sensitive maternal behaviors (e.g., acknowledging, imitating, touch) using the Coding Interactive Behavior (CIB) manual (Feldman, 1998). All linear growth models were specified and estimated using Mplus 8 (Muthén & Muthén, 2017). Missing data were handled with full information maximum likelihood estimation.

The maternal sensitivity composite score significantly increased from 3 to 12 months (b = .03, p < .001). The majority of indicators included in the maternal sensitivity composite score followed a similar positive, linear trend (bs range = .05-.08, p < .001). However, two individual behaviors—acknowledging (b = -.06, p < .001) and touch (b = -.13, p < .001)—significantly decreased across the first year of infancy. Another behavior, elaboration, did not significantly vary across time (b = .01, p = .08). For maternal sensitivity, a higher score at 3 months was significantly correlated with a lower rate of change across time. A similar trend was observed for all sensitivity indicators save for acknowledging and touch, for which the intercept and slope were not significantly correlated. See Table 1 for a summary of all results.

Findings suggest that many of the behaviors that underpin the construct of maternal sensitivity have unique developmental trajectories across infancy. These differences may have important implications across a variety of child socioemotional competencies. Subsequent analyses will differentiate specific competencies for which specific growth trajectories of behavioral sensitivity trajectories matter most during the early childhood period.

Authors

• Lauren van Huisstede, Arizona State University
  Presenting Author

• Keith Crnic, Arizona State University
  Non-Presenting Author