Related Experiment Video

Updated: Feb 22, 2026

Using a Murine Model of Psychosocial Stress in Pregnancy as a Translationally Relevant Paradigm for Psychiatric Disorders in Mothers and Infants
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Using a Murine Model of Psychosocial Stress in Pregnancy as a Translationally Relevant Paradigm for Psychiatric Disorders in Mothers and Infants

Published on: June 13, 2021

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Everyday maternal sensitivity to distress is dynamic and systematically varies across contexts

Kaya de Barbaro1, Anna Madden-Rusnak1

  • 1Department of Psychology, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, United States.

Child Development
|February 20, 2026
PubMed

We examine caregiver sensitivity to infant distress across the day in home environments. Families with infants (N = 38, Mage = 4.5 months, SD = 2.3 months, 58% White non-Hispanic, 53% girls) shared full-day infant-worn audio recordings (M = 22.98 hr, SD = 4.06 hr). For each episode of distress, we annotated caregiver sensitivity and episode context. Infants experienced wide variability in sensitivity to distress across the day (77% of variance within-person). Media use predicted lower sensitivity between mothers (β = -0.46), and emotionally intense interactions predicted lower sensitivity both within (β = -0.11) and between mothers (β = -0.23). Overall, at home, responses to infant distress were heterogeneous, and everyday contexts predicted the quality of caregiving infants received.

Keywords:
ecologically valid paradigmmaternal sensitivitywithin-person variability

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