Is one secure attachment enough? Infant cortisol reactivity and the security of infant-mother and infant-father attachments at the end of the first year

Kuo, Patty X.; Saini, Ekjyot K.; Tengelitsch, Elizabeth; Volling, Brenda L.

doi:10.1080/14616734.2019.1582595

Cited by 22 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 78 publications

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“…In humans, decreased responsiveness, sensitivity, and synchrony in early caregiving have been correlated with prolonged or exaggerated increases in cortisol in response to stress (118, 119), whereas secure parental attachment has been associated with lower cortisol levels in response to stress (120) ( Figure 1 ). However, in cases of more severe early deprivation or maltreatment, patterns of HPA responsiveness have been mixed, perhaps due to the complex nature of maltreatment and the co-occurrence with psychiatric disorders.…”

Section: Pathways To Addictionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pathways Relating the Neurobiology of Attachment to Drug Addiction

et al. 2019

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Substance use disorders constitute a significant public health problem in North America and worldwide. Specifically, substance addictions in women during pregnancy or in the postpartum period have adverse effects not only on the mother, but also on mother-infant attachment and the child’s subsequent development. Additionally, there is growing evidence suggesting that parental addiction may be transmitted intergenerationally, where the child of parents with addiction problems is more likely to experience addiction as an adult. The current review takes a developmental perspective and draws from animal and human studies to examine how compromised early experience, including insecure attachment, early abuse/neglect, and unresolved trauma, may influence the development of neurobiological pathways associated with addictions, ultimately increasing one’s susceptibility to addictions later in life. We approach this from three different levels: molecular, neuroendocrine and behavioral; and examine the oxytocin affiliation system, dopamine reward system, and glucocorticoid stress response system in this regard. Increased understanding of these underlying mechanisms may help identify key targets for early prevention efforts and inform needed intervention strategies related to both insecure attachment and addiction.

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Section: Pathways To Addictionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pathways Relating the Neurobiology of Attachment to Drug Addiction

et al. 2019

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“…The SSP involves physical separations between parent and infant and is often conducted during the latter half of the first year to assess the security of infant-parent attachments. Even though such separations between 12-month-old infants and their caregivers reliably elicit stress (Kuo et al, 2019;Spangler & Grossmann, 1993), infants of this age are becoming more independent as they enter toddlerhood, feeling more comfortable exploring further away from their caregiver for longer periods of time, and developing more mature emotion and behavioral regulation strategies than younger infants. Young infants of around 4 to 6 months of age are more dependent on the caregiver to direct interaction and respond to affective and behavioral cues as has been so elegantly demonstrated in studies using the SFP.…”

Section: Limitations and Future Directionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whereas most research to date has focused on mother-infant adrenocortical attunement, few studies have considered cortisol attunement between infants and their fathers, even though infants form attachment relationships with their fathers (Kuo et al, 2019). Prior research has demonstrated oxytocin synchrony between fathers and infants, suggesting transmission in the neurobiology of affiliation (Feldman, 2012b;.…”

Section: Father-infant Cortisol Attunementmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, without comparisons across father-child and mother-child dyads, it is not clear what accounts for variation in cortisol interdependence and attunement. Kuo et al (2019) recently found that when infants had a secure attachment to their fathers, but an insecure attachment to their mothers, they exhibited a hyperresponsive trajectory of cortisol across the SSP with higher levels of cortisol at baseline that declined over time compared to infants with secure attachments to both parents, a secure attachment to mother but insecure to father, or when both attachments were insecure; all of whom exhibited a more typical cortisol…”

Section: Father-infant Cortisol Attunementmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Adrenocortical interdependence in father‐infant and mother‐infant dyads: Attunement or something more?

Bader

Tan

Gonzalez

et al. 2021

Developmental Psychobiology

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Father-infant and mother-infant (one-year-olds) adrenocortical attunement was explored during the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP) among 125 father-infant and 141 mother-infant dyads. Cortisol was assessed at baseline (T1), 20 (T2), and 40 minutes (T3) after the first parent-infant separation. Initial correlations indicated significant associations between father-infant and mother-infant cortisol at each time. Cortisol interdependence was further explored using Actor-Partner Interdependence Models.There was no evidence supporting cortisol interdependence based on within-time residual correlations between parent-infant cortisol, once stability and cross-lagged paths were controlled. Infant cortisol at T2 predicted T3 cortisol for fathers and mothers resulting in a series of follow-up exploratory analyses to examine mediating processes which revealed that infant distress during the SSP predicted infant T2 cortisol, which, in turn, predicted infant negativity during the 15-min mother-infant teaching task that followed the SSP. Among father-infant dyads, infant T2 cortisol predicted infant negativity during father-infant interaction, with infants expressing more negativity having less sensitive fathers. Findings provide little support of parent-infant adrenocortical attunement across either father-infant or mother-infant dyads during the SSP, but preliminary evidence indicates infant distress as a potential mediator.Future research may want to focus on affective and behavioral processes that underlie the concept of parent-infant adrenocortical attunement.

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“…Contrasting findings were also reported by studies that compared the significance of the parent's identity (mostly mothers and fathers) on the child's developmental outcomes. Some studies showed that secure attachment to mothers only may confer more favorable outcomes than secure attachment to fathers only (e.g., when assessing cortisol output; Kuo et al, 2019); yet other studies indicated that the difference in the predictive power of having a single secure attachment to mothers as opposed to fathers is immaterial (e.g., when assessing externalizing behavior problems; Kochanska & Kim, 2013).…”

Section: Research On Attachment Network: a Brief Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Early Attachment Network to Multiple Caregivers: History, Assessment Models, and Future Research Recommendations

Dagan¹,

Sagi‐Schwartz²

2021

Preprint

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Early attachment has been commonly hypothesized to predict children’s future developmental outcomes, and robust evidence relying on assessments of single caregiver-child attachment patterns has corroborated this hypothesis. Nevertheless, most often children are raised by multiple caregivers, and they tend to form attachment bonds with more than one of them. In this paper, we briefly describe the conceptual and empirical roots underlying the notion of attachment network to multiple caregivers. We describe potential reasons for researchfocusing on a single caregiver (most often mothers, but recently also fathers) and the historical attempts to establish a more ecologically valid assessment of attachment to multiple caregivers. Finally, we describe a recently developed organizational framework that includes testable models on which future research may rely for assessing the predictive power of attachment networks to multiple caregivers on children’s developmental outcomes.

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Is one secure attachment enough? Infant cortisol reactivity and the security of infant-mother and infant-father attachments at the end of the first year

Cited by 22 publications

References 78 publications

Pathways Relating the Neurobiology of Attachment to Drug Addiction

Pathways Relating the Neurobiology of Attachment to Drug Addiction

Adrenocortical interdependence in father‐infant and mother‐infant dyads: Attunement or something more?

Early Attachment Network to Multiple Caregivers: History, Assessment Models, and Future Research Recommendations

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