Evidence for Representations of Caregiving Behavior in Early Childhood: A Novel Pointing Paradigm

This study tests the link between parental behavior and children’s abstract representations of attachment-related caregiving behavior, using a novel online paradigm. Fifty-three mothers and their 3-year-old children (22 female, 31 male sex assigned at birth) participated in a video session from their homes; mothers reported on their responses to children’s distress, and children completed a video task using abstract shapes to assess their expectations of caregiving responses to distress (crying) and non-distress (laughing). Mothers’ emotion-focused responses to child distress were positively associated with children’s expectations of responsive caregiving in the Crying condition (b = .20, p = .004), but not the Laughing condition (b = .004, p = .949). Results held when accounting for maternal education and depressive symptoms, as well as dimensions of child temperament. Findings provide evidence for experience-based, context-specific representations of attachment-related caregiving behavior in early childhood.