Workshop Description: This workshop will describe the development and evidence base of an intervention that we have developed that targets specific issues identified as critical among young children who have experienced adversity. Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC) is a 10-session home visiting program that is designed to enhance parent sensitivity and reduce frightening behavior. Parent coaches implement the intervention through home visitation, and make frequent “in-the-moment” comments about ongoing parent-child interactions that relate to intervention targets. Through randomized clinical trials, we have found that children of parents who receive the ABC intervention show more favorable outcomes than children in a control condition across a range of outcomes. Finally, this workshop will describe how intervention fidelity is assessed and maintained as ABC is implemented in the community. 

Speaker Biography: Mary Dozier is Unidel Amy E. duPont Chair and Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of Delaware. She has studied the development of young children in foster care and young children living with neglecting birth parents, examining challenges in attachment and regulatory capabilities. Along with her graduate students and research team, she developed an intervention, Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC), for parents of vulnerable infants. Through randomized clinical trials, ABC has been demonstrated to be effective in enhancing parental sensitivity and children’s behavioral and biological functioning. In 2016 she was named the Francis Alison Professor, the university’s highest faculty honor, and is the 2019 recipient of the APA Urie Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contribution in Developmental Psychology in the Service of Science and Society.