Less is more: Meta-analyses of sensitivity and attachment interventions in early childhood
Bakermans-Kranenburg and colleagues meta-analysed seventy studies of programmes intended to improve parental sensitivity and infant attachment security, covering several thousand families. Randomised interventions worked, with a modest effect on insensitive parenting and a smaller one on attachment insecurity. The finding in the title is the practically important one: less is more. Programmes with a moderate number of sessions and a clear behavioural focus outperformed longer, broader, more therapeutic ones, and this held for families with multiple problems as well as for families without. The theoretical result matters too. Interventions that did more to improve sensitivity also did more to improve attachment security, which is the closest thing available to experimental evidence that sensitivity causes attachment rather than merely accompanying it. This is the standard citation for the claim that caregiver sensitivity is modifiable, and for what kind of programme actually modifies it.
Bakermans-Kranenburg and colleagues meta-analysed seventy studies of programmes intended to improve parental sensitivity and infant attachment security, covering several thousand families. Randomised interventions worked, with a modest effect on insensitive parenting and a smaller one on attachment insecurity. The finding in the title is the practically important one: less is more. Programmes with a moderate number of sessions and a clear behavioural focus outperformed longer, broader, more therapeutic ones, and this held for families with multiple problems as well as for families without. The theoretical result matters too. Interventions that did more to improve sensitivity also did more to improve attachment security, which is the closest thing available to experimental evidence that sensitivity causes attachment rather than merely accompanying it. This is the standard citation for the claim that caregiver sensitivity is modifiable, and for what kind of programme actually modifies it.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
What our sources record
Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Bakermans-Kranenburg, M. J., van IJzendoorn, M. H., & Juffer, F. (2003). 'Less is more: meta-analyses of sensitivity and attachment interventions in early childhood.' Psychological Bulletin, 129(2), 195-215. 70 studies, 88 intervention effects. Randomised interventions changed insensitive parenting at d = 0.33 and attachment insecurity at d = 0.20. Moderate numbers of sessions with a behavioural focus outperformed longer, more intensive, insight-oriented programmes.
Where we use it
- What the Crib Actually Decides, Why We Care
Reliability of this reference
The link below was matched against the publisher's record on title, first author and year, and all three agree.
The source
https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.2.195
DOI: 10.1037/0033-2909.129.2.195