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

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Applied Psychology and Human Development,Toronto, ON, CanadaBackground: Parental responsivity is important to children’s cognitive and socioemotional development, yet isunder-represented in primary healthcare, because the measurement is specialized and time-consuming.Methods: The current study developed a measure of maternal cognitive sensitivity (CS), which uses impression-istic ratings based on brief observations of parent–child interaction when children are 3 years old. Results: Usingdata from a longitudinal cohort (Time 1, N = 501), the CS measure had good psychometric properties, wassignificantly related to a gold-standard maternal responsivity measure, and was predicted by the samesocio-demographic factors predictive of other measures of parental responsivity. Finally, a well-establishedpathway from socioeconomic risk (child age 2 months) to compromised parenting (child age 3 years) to negativechild outcome (child age 4.5 years) was demonstrated with CS as the mediator. Conclusion: The maternal CSmeasure is brief, can be easily trained, and takes 8 min to administer and code, making it potentially useful inprimary healthcare settings. Keywords: Maternal responsivity, child cognitive development, parent–childinteraction, primary healthcare, thin slice methodology.