Article summary with The Influence of mothers’ and fathers’ sensitivity in the first year of life on children’s cognitive outcomes at 18 and 36 months by Malmberg a.o. - 2015

What is this article about?

It has been well established in previous research that the relationship of parents and their children is very important, not only for the current well-being of the child, but also for later cognitive and language development. However, it is not well researched yet which aspects of parent-child interaction evoke a higher cognitive development and which interventions can be used to enhance this effect. Hereby, the mother-child and the father-child relationship are also of importance in this development. Additionally, it would be interesting to learn more about the differences between mother-child relationships and father-child relationships. Similarities in physiological responses to their child, but differences in behavioural responses have been found in previous research, suggesting that those differences might contribute to differences later on in the development of the children.

Previous studies focused more on the effect of parental sensitivity on the attachment style rather than on the children’s cognitive development. This study aims to investigate whether and to what extent parental sensitivity influences cognitive development and if one parents’ sensitivity.

How was this study conducted?  

A total of 97 families were recruited for this study and asked to video-tape the separate interactions of fathers and mothers with their children.

The video taped interactions had to fulfill specific requirements. There were in total five segments of 2 and a half minutes of play time with the following instructions/stimuli: free play without toys, exploration of an age-appropriate book, stacking a ring toy, a wooden shaped toy and a battery musical toy. Each toy was shared by the parents with their children. Mother-child interactions and father-child interactions were conducted and observed separately by different observers. This interaction was measured at the time of the child’s age of 10 month.

A follow-up assessment was conducted at the age of 18 months and of 36 months. The Bayles Scale of Infant Development II and Reynell Developmental Language Scale was used to assess the children’s developmental outcomes.

What are the results and how can they be interpreted?

Overall, maternal and paternal sensitivity were found to be related to the child cognitive development in the outcome of this study. Socio-demographic factors were included in the analysis but did not influence the results.

Furthermore, the findings of this study suggested that one parent’s sensitivity can balance a lower sensitivity of the other parent out. Another interesting finding is that father’s sensitivity was stronger related to children’s cognitive development compared to the mother’s sensitivity. This does not align with findings of other studies and should be further investigated by future studies.