The development of a measure of maternal cognitive sensitivity appropriate for use in primary care health settings

Parental responsivity is important to children's cognitive and socioemotional development, yet is under-represented in primary healthcare, because the measurement is specialized and time-consuming.

The current study developed a measure of maternal cognitive sensitivity (CS), which uses impressionistic ratings based on brief observations of parent-child interaction when children are 3 years old.

Using data from a longitudinal cohort (Time 1, N = 501), the CS measure had good psychometric properties, was significantly related to a gold-standard maternal responsivity measure, and was predicted by the same socio-demographic factors predictive of other measures of parental responsivity. Finally, a well-established pathway from socioeconomic risk (child age 2 months) to compromised parenting (child age 3 years) to negative child outcome (child age 4.5 years) was demonstrated with CS as the mediator.

The maternal CS measure is brief, can be easily trained, and takes 8 min to administer and code, making it potentially useful in primary healthcare settings.