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Supporting Infant Emotion Regulation Through Attachment-Based Intervention: a Randomized Controlled Trial

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Abstract

Infant emotion regulation has long-term implications for human development, highlighting the need for preventive interventions that support emotion regulation early in life. Such interventions may be especially important for infants higher in emotional reactivity who need to regulate their emotions more frequently and intensely than infants lower in emotional reactivity. The current randomized trial examined main and moderated effects of an attachment-based intervention on (a) infants’ use of mother-oriented and self-soothing emotion regulation strategies and (b) infant emotion dysregulation in 186 low-income, predominantly Latino infants. We tested the brief (10-session) Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC) intervention in the context of home-based federal Early Head Start (EHS) services. Control participants received home-based EHS plus 10 weekly books. Intent-to-treat analyses with covariates revealed main effects of the intervention on infants’ use of mother-oriented emotion regulation strategies during a brief (40-s) novel and potentially fear-inducing procedure (d = 0.31). Infant emotional reactivity moderated intervention impacts on mother-oriented emotion regulation strategies and on infant emotion dysregulation: We found stronger effects of the intervention for infants relatively higher in emotional reactivity. Findings are discussed in terms of the preventive value of attachment-based interventions for supporting early emotion regulation.

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Funding

This research was supported by the Administration for Children and Families Grant 90-YR-0059, awarded to Lisa Berlin and Brenda Jones Harden.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Maryland School of Social Work, 525 West Redwood St., Baltimore, MD, 21201, USA

    Allison D. Hepworth & Lisa J. Berlin

  2. University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Tiffany L. Martoccio, Erin N. Cannon, Rebecca H. Berger & Brenda Jones Harden

Authors
  1. Allison D. Hepworth
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  2. Lisa J. Berlin
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  3. Tiffany L. Martoccio
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  4. Erin N. Cannon
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  5. Rebecca H. Berger
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  6. Brenda Jones Harden
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Allison D. Hepworth.

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Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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This content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not represent the official views of the Administration for Children and Families.

Ethical Approval

The University of Maryland, Baltimore Institutional Review Board approved all research procedures (Partners for Parenting; HP-00051071).

Informed Consent

Mothers provided written acknowledgement of informed consent for their own and the target child’s study participation.

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Appendix

Appendix

Table 4 Brief Infant-Toddler Social Emotional Assessment (BITSEA) items: Problem Index
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Hepworth, A.D., Berlin, L.J., Martoccio, T.L. et al. Supporting Infant Emotion Regulation Through Attachment-Based Intervention: a Randomized Controlled Trial. Prev Sci 21, 702–713 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-020-01127-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-020-01127-1

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