Description
PIs: Wendy Matthews and Carolyn Dayton
Parents who have been exposed to interpersonal and community violence are at risk for the development of insensitive parenting with their young infants. This is because violence and trauma confer dysregulating effects on the person’s biology, psychology and (often) their behaviors. This study will examine whether singing lullabies to their babies will help violence-exposed parents become calmer so that they will be better able to care for their infants. While they are singing to their babies in our developmental laboratory, we will measure their physiological (heart rate, breathing rate and skin conductance) and behavioral responses to their babies and we will also measure the physiological responses of their babies. Research assistants on this study will interact with the study families, learn to collect the physiological and behavioral data and learn to enter and code the study data.