NWO Open Competition XS Grant for Research on Parent–Infant Alignment

Researcher Anoek Sluiter-Oerlemans has been awarded an NWO XS grant to study how parents in the first months of their baby’s life non-verbally show that they understand their child as an individual with their own thoughts and feelings.

The project focuses on so-called mind-mindedness, a concept describing how parents recognize and attune to their child’s mental states. Previous research has shown that children of mind-minded parents develop more favorably in social, emotional, and cognitive domains. Until now, this attunement has mostly been measured through parental language, while babies in the first months do not yet understand words.

Sluiter-Oerlemans will therefore examine non-verbal signals such as gaze direction, touch, and imitation. She will use video recordings from the large-scale TRAILS Next Generation study in Northern Netherlands, which captured interactions between parents and their three-month-old babies in the home environment.

The non-verbal behaviors will be systematically coded and linked to verbal mind-mindedness and later developmental outcomes at 2.5 and 4.5 years of age. The study will also explore whether mothers and fathers differ in how they attune to their child.

With this NWO XS project, Sluiter-Oerlemans aims to gain a better understanding of what exactly happens in early parent–child interactions. The results are expected to lead to the first openly accessible coding manual for non-verbal mind-mindedness, which can be used in future research and parent support.