Jude Cassidy
University of Maryland, MD·Psychology
Children who feel securely attached to a caregiver, trusting that the adult will comfort and protect them, tend to be more resilient in stressful environments. Children with insecure attachment are at higher risk for behavior problems and for physiological dysregulation, meaning trouble regulating the body's stress responses.
- Fields
Psychology
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
attachment
Circle of Security – Parenting
parenting intervention
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jun 2027
What they work on
- Test whether adding the Circle of Security – Parenting intervention to Early Head Start services reduces insecure attachment, physiological dysregulation and behavior problems, in a randomized trial of 249 parent-child pairs.
- Test whether the intervention promotes sensitive parental responses to child distress compared with regular Early Head Start services.
- Examine which family or child characteristics moderate, or change, how effective the intervention is.
- Test whether changes in parents' responses to child distress act as the mechanism through which the intervention improves child outcomes.
More about the research
A few approaches to preventing insecure attachment look promising, but none is widely used. This project tests whether a brief, attachment-based parenting program can be delivered through an existing, widely available service for low-income families.
Why it matters
Children in low-income families facing stress such as parental depression or trauma could benefit if a brief parenting program delivered through Early Head Start lowers their risk of insecure attachment and behavior problems. Because Early Head Start already reaches many communities, positive results could support wide use of the Circle of Security – Parenting program in public early-childhood services.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Laura Lee Mcintyre
University of Oregon, OR·Psychology
Describe how emotional and behavioral problems in children aged 4–15, with and without developmental disabilities, changed before, during and after COVID-19 school closures, using piecewise growth models on combined data from four long-term studies.
Jaime Peterson
Oregon Health & Science University, OR·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether Kinder Coaching, a parent coaching program delivered by community health workers, improves preschoolers' school readiness on the Brigance III screen compared with a provider-reviewed checklist, in a randomized trial of 240 Medicaid families in Oregon.
Alice Carter
University of Massachusetts-Boston, MA·Psychology
Test in a randomized trial across 20 Early Intervention agencies whether training providers in Reciprocal Imitation Training (a play-based therapy) improves language and social communication in toddlers with early autism signs, compared with usual care.
The school
University of Maryland: 49 labs on PI Pages, $1.5B a year on research, 602 research doctorates a year.
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