Bonnie Erin BrettColorado Department of Education · Office of Student Supports; Dropout Prevention and Student Re-engagement
Bonnie Erin Brett
PhD
About
22
Publications
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Introduction
Professionally, I love studying the intricacies of the parent-child relationship and how seen (e.g., parental sensitivity) and unseen (e.g., biological regulators) forces operate to influence development. Personally, I am passionate about improving the availability of resources, such as parental leave, parent education, and affordable childcare, for all parents, but particularly those in vulnerable populations.
Publications
Publications (22)
A central hypothesis in attachment theory is that parents' own attachment will influence their parenting behavior in ways important to children’s well-being; little is known, however, about mechanisms through which self-reported adult attachment style influences parenting behavior. This study examines prospective links between mothers’ insecure att...
The cognitive skills critical for success have largely been studied in Western populations, despite the fact that children in low- and middle-income countries are at risk to not reach their full developmental potential. Moreover, scientists should leverage recent discovery to explore means of boosting cognition in at-risk populations. This semi-ran...
Skin‐to‐skin contact (SSC) between mothers and their infants has beneficial effects in both preterm and full‐term infants. Underlying mechanisms are largely unknown. This randomized controlled trial assessed whether daily SSC in full‐term mother–infant dyads: (1) decreases infants’ cortisol and behavioral reactivity to a mild naturalistic stressor,...
This randomized controlled trial examined the effects of a daily hour of mother-infant skin-to-skin contact (SSC) during the first five postnatal weeks, compared to care-as-usual, on maternal depressive (primary outcome), anxiety, stress, fatigue, pain, and delivery-related post-traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). Prenatal symptom severity and touch...
Given that parental caregiving quality affects child development from birth onwards, it is important to detect parents who are at risk for low-quality caregiving as early as possible, preferably before or soon after birth. This study investigated whether cortisol (CORT) and testosterone (T) measured during the last trimester of pregnancy and six we...
Maternal depressive symptoms (MDS) have been linked to both child internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Theory suggests that child attachment security may be a protective factor against the negative effects of MDS. This study examined child attachment security as a buffer of the link between MDS and child internalizing and externalizin...
This randomized controlled trial evaluated the effect of a 5-week daily skin-to-skin contact (SSC) intervention between mothers and their full-term infants, compared with care-as-usual, on exclusive and continued breastfeeding duration during the first post-natal year. Healthy pregnant women (n = 116) from a community sample were enrolled and rando...
This semi-randomized controlled trial examined the effects of a probiotic food supplement on cortisol and C-reactive protein (CRP) in a sample of 262 four-to seven-year-old children (56% girls) in two economically-disadvantaged schools in an urban setting in Côte d’Ivoire. For one semester, children in one school were randomized to receive a probio...
Studies indicate that pregnancy is associated with declines in working memory (WM), potentially due to the intense pregnancy hormonal fluctuations. These declines extend into the postpartum period and may even be worsened due to sleepless nights and continued hormonal changes. However, previous studies finding WM stability from pregnancy to postpar...
Maternal depressive symptoms (MDS) are inconsistently associated with lower rates of child prosocial behavior. Studies typically examine prosocial behavior as a unitary construct rather than examining its multiple dimensions, and rarely consider how the quality of the parent-child relationship could influence this association.
OBJECTIVE: The curren...
Fostering healthy developmental growth in the first years of life is associated with numerous favorable cognitive, social, and economic outcomes. Funding and promoting research aimed at identifying potential targets for early intervention should be a top priority for lawmakers and funders. One promising avenue of research and potential early interv...
The main research article (Beier et al., 2018, Child Development) describes children’s responses during nine tasks: 3 helping opportunities, 3 sharing opportunities, and 3 comforting opportunities. This document provides procedural details for each of those tasks, plus coding guides for deriving children’s prosocial scores and identifying additiona...
Additional methods and results for Beier et al. (2018), "Helping, Sharing, and Comforting in Young Children: Links to Individual Differences in Attachment".
Additional details for the Preschool Strange Situation protocol, as reported in Beier et al. (2018), "Helping, Sharing, and Comforting in Young Children: Links to Individual Differences in Attachment".
Ninety 6- and 7-year-olds (49.3% White, mostly middle class) from greater Washington, DC were randomly assigned to a subliminal priming condition (secure, happy, or neutral) to determine if attachment security priming decreases physiological, expressive, and self-reported fear reactions to threatening stimuli. Dispositional attachment security was...
Although evidence shows that attachment insecurity and disorganization increase risk for the development of psychopathology (Fearon, Bakermans-Kranenburg, van IJzendoorn, Lapsley, & Roisman, 2010; Groh, Roisman, van IJzendoorn, Bakermans-Kranenburg, & Fearon, 2012), implementation challenges have precluded dissemination of attachment interventions...
Within the field of relationship science there is increasing interest in the connections between close relationships and physical health. In the present study, we examined whether adolescents’ (∼12 years old) and young adults’ (∼20 years old) perceptions of their parents as a secure base prospectively predict C-reactive protein (CRP), a commonly us...
The ability to sensitively care for others’ wellbeing develops early in ontogeny and is an important developmental milestone for healthy social, emotional, and moral development. One facet of care for others, prosocial comforting, has been linked with important social outcomes such as peer acceptance and friendship quality, underscoring the importa...
Objective:
Previous research has examined the developmental consequences, particularly in early childhood, of parents' supportive and unsupportive responses to children's negative emotions. Much less is known about factors that explain why parents respond in ways that may support or undermine their children's emotions, and even less is known about...
Questions
Questions (3)
Hello! I am working on a study where we are measuring executive functions in 6-7 yr old children. We would like a measure of selective attention, but I am having trouble finding a free Cancellation task. Both the Bell Cancellation Task and the WISC Cancellation are beyond our budget, but we are hoping to find something like this.
Thank you!
Hello all,
I am working on an RCT where we hope to measure 5-6-yr-old children's executive functioning (memory, cognitive flexibility, inhibitory control, attention, etc... exact domains not exactly nailed down yet) 3 times, 2 months apart (baseline, end of month 2, and end of month 4). I'm not finding much literature on the test re-test reliability of such tests, nor am I finding anything addressing testing effects. I know many tests (such as DCCS) have ways to change the task to avoid such effects (e.g., switch which rule you start with), but only for two measurements, not three. If anyone can point to any resources regarding this, I would be most appreciative. Also important to note; we are conducting these tests in West Africa, so would prefer to avoid screen based measures (as they might be too far out of the realm of kids' normal experiences).
Thank you in advance!
I am designing an RCT with 3 conditions (in 3 independent groups) and 3 repeated measures. The RCT will be 4 months long with measurements happening at baseline, month 2, and at outcome. I have read much on the matter but do not know whether a linear mixed model or a repeated measures ANOVA would be more appropriate. I am interested in differences between groups and change over time.
Thank you!
