Prenatal physiological predictors of maternal sensitivity and the emergence of infant attachment behaviors
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Attachment theory is the dominant framework for understanding infants’ ties to their parents (Bowlby, 1969/1982). Specifically, variations in caregiving practices are hypothesized to promote one of three normative attachment behaviors: security (depicted as effective interpersonal regulation), avoidance (depicted as a self-directed regulatory style), and resistance (depicted as less effective interpersonal regulation; Ainsworth, 1967; Ainsworth et al., 1978; Main et al., 1985; McElwain & Booth-LaForce, 2006). Maternal sensitivity is thought to be an especially salient predictor of later attachment security, a parent-child relationship where the child views their caregiver as a safe and consistent secure base from which to explore (Ainsworth et al., 1978). To date, many studies have provided support for this association between maternal sensitivity and child attachment security (DeWolff & van IJzendoorn, 1997; Koehn & Kerns, 2018; McElwain & Booth-LaForce, 2006). Parents’ attachment representations are theorized to predict their sensitivity to their children’s behaviors. Thus, associations between parental attachment representations, parental sensitivity, and child attachment patterns may be one pathway for intergenerational transmission of attachment (Main et al., 1985). Although meta-analytic data support this transmission (van IJzendoorn, 1995; Verhage et al., 2016), adult attachment representations account for only a modest portion of the variance in infant attachment outcomes. Thus, other parental characteristics—such as adults’ physiological responses to infant distress—may be meaningful predictors of parental sensitivity and infant attachment behaviors (Verhage et al., 2016). Predictors of children’s attachment behaviors have also primarily been assessed among children one year or older, and little is known about the origins of children’s emerging attachment behaviors before one year of age (Verhage et al., 2016). It is important to understand predictors of infants’ emerging attachment behavior to develop early attachment interventions, as these relationships rapidly develop throughout infancy and become more established in the second half of the first year of life (Bowlby, 1969/1982). This area of research has historically been limited due to the few methods available for assessing attachment behaviors earlier in infancy. Traditionally, the earliest available method for assessing infant attachment is the Strange Situation Paradigm, which was initially designed for infants 12-18 months of age and consists of a series of separations from and reunions with the primary caregiver (Ainsworth et al., 1978). A second task, the Still-Face Paradigm, was designed for much younger infants and consists of a series of psychological separations and reunions from the caregiver by directing the caregiver to remain unresponsive to the infant’s needs before reengaging (Tronick et al., 1978). This task closely aligns with the Strange Situation, with adjustments made to address the developmental needs of younger infants. Kogan & Carter (1996) identified the similarities between the Strange Situation and the Still-Face Paradigm and developed a coding system to assess infants’ avoidance, resistance, and attention maintenance during the Still-Face reunion episodes to determine whether emergent attachment behaviors could be coded in this context. They found that infants’ behaviors during the Still-Face reunion episodes were associated with parents’ caregiving behaviors in the expected manner, and that infants’ behaviors during the Still-Face Paradigm predicted their behavior during the Strange Situation later in infancy (Kogan & Carter, 1996). Subsequent research also found that infants’ behaviors during the Still-Face reunions were associated with caregiving behaviors, and with infants’ physiological responses to the task in expected ways (Conradt & Ablow, 2010; Speck et al., 2023). This suggests that these codes may meaningfully reflect infants’ emergent attachment relationships; however, these codes have not been widely adopted and must be tested further. Infant crying is a common occurrence in households with a neonate and is thought to represent an attachment behavior that serves the function of eliciting parental care and proximity (Bowlby, 1969/1982). Although crying is intended to elicit a caregiving response from parents, adults display a wide range of physiological responses to an infant’s cry, and this variability may meaningfully predict differences in adults’ caregiving behaviors. Specifically, elevated electrodermal activity in response to an infant’s cry may reflect behavioral inhibition that impedes adults’ ability to effectively respond to the infant (Speck et al., 2023). Supporting this, Ablow and colleagues (2013) tested the association between mothers’ skin conductance level (SCL) responses to an infant cry stimulus and their observed caregiving behaviors. While there was no main effect of SCL on maternal sensitivity, mothers with insecure attachment representations who also responded with high SCL during the cry task interacted with their infants less sensitively compared to other mothers in the study. Additionally, in other work, mothers’ elevated SCL responses to an infant’s crying were directly associated with their infants’ elevated insecure-avoidant attachment behaviors in response to the Still-Face Paradigm (Speck et al., 2023). An alternative line of research suggests that elevated SCL responses to infant distress should be assessed in combination with RSA (Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia) responses. Leerkes and colleagues (2015) suggest that parents’ physiological responses should be assessed holistically using measures of both the parasympathetic and sympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system, rather than assessing the effect of SCL in isolation. They suggest that simultaneously elevated SCL and blunted RSA withdrawal in response to an infant’s cries reflects a combination of high arousal and low self-regulation that results in mother-oriented cry processing, in which the individual is preoccupied with their own regulation and ineffective in their response to the distressed infant. Supporting this, Leerkes and colleagues (2015) reported that mothers who exhibited elevated SCL and blunted RSA withdrawal in response to the infant cry were most likely to report negative beliefs about infant crying in response to the infant cry stimuli, which in turn predicted insensitive caregiving behaviors. Additionally, in an independent sample, they found that this interaction predicted increased maternal detachment and negative regard during interactions with their infants (Leerkes et al., 2023). Finally, elevated SCL and low RSA withdrawal in the context of caring for their own infants also predicted infants’ attachment disorganization (Leerkes et al., 2017). The current study will test two competing hypotheses regarding the effect of prenatal skin conductance level on maternal sensitivity and infants’ attachment behaviors. The first hypothesis is focused on the main effects of maternal skin conductance activity based on the findings from Ablow and colleagues (2013) and Speck and colleagues (2023), and the second hypothesis is focused on the potential interaction effects reported by Leerkes and colleagues (2015, 2017, 2023).
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7169610951