Maria de la Paz Ferro’s research while affiliated with Inter-American Development Bank and other places

We assess the effects of the Crianza Positiva text and audio e-messaging program on caregiver–child language interaction patterns. The program is a six-month-long intervention for families with children aged 0–2 aimed at strengthening parental competences. Its design exploits behavioral tools such as reminders, suggestions of action, and messages of encouragement to reinforce and sustain positive parenting practices. Families in 24 early childhood centers in Uruguay that completed an eight-week workshop were randomized into receiving or not receiving mobile messages. After the program, we videotaped 10-minute sessions of free play between the caregiver and the child, and decoded language patterns using automated techniques. The intervention was successful at improving the quality of parental vocalizations, as measured by the parent's pitch range. We also found suggestive evidence of increases in the duration of adult vocalizations. The results are consistent with more frequent parental self-reported involvement in reading, telling stories, and describing things to the child. Regarding the child, we find a nonrobust decrease in the duration of vocalizations, which we attribute to a crowding-out effect by the caregiver in the context of a fixed 10-minute suggested activity and a more proactive parental role.

Objective An innovative low-cost parenting intervention, implemented through health services, in Jamaica showed benefits to children's cognitive development at 18 months and parent's attitudes concerning childcare. We assessed the impact of the intervention on child and parent outcomes at 6 years of age. Methods A cluster randomized trial of two parenting interventions was conducted through 20 health centres in Jamaica. Interventions were implemented from age 3-18 months and each intervention benefited cognitive development at 18 months (effect size 0.34-0.38SD). Children were reassessed at 6 years (n=262, 80.1% of those assessed at 18 months) to determine any benefits to cognition, behaviour, and parenting behaviour. Loss to follow-up was not significantly different by treatment. Inverse probability weighting and Lee bounds were used to adjust for loss to follow-up, and multilevel regression analyses conducted with random effects at the health centre level. Results There were no significant benefits to any child outcomes at age 6 years or to parenting behaviour. Results are robust using the wild cluster bootstrap procedure and using Lee bounds for attrition. The initial trial benefits were reproduced with the current sample and methods. Conclusion Lack of sustained benefits may be related to the initial effect size and low intensity of the intervention that ended very young at age 18 months. It may also be related to lack of initial impact on home environment and fade-out of effects in a country with near universal preschool. The findings have implications for intervention design and targeting.