Annual Research Review: The role of caregiver sensitivity in children's developmental outcomes – an umbrella review

Caregiver sensitivity is the extent to which a caregiver notices a child's signal, interprets it correctly, and responds quickly and appropriately. Although originally introduced to developmental science as the key antecedent of attachment security, decades since its conception, hundreds of studies have been conducted examining the predictive significance of caregiver sensitivity to a broad range of developmental outcomes. The literature on caregiver sensitivity and related constructs (e.g., warmth, responsivity, negative parenting) has grown exponentially and is now the focus of several meta-analyses. We conducted an umbrella review - a systematic review of reviews - to examine the extent to which caregiver sensitivity and related constructs are associated with child attachment, socioemotional, and cognitive outcomes. Searches in EMBASE, PsycINFO, and Medline and yielded 2,157 abstracts. Studies were included if they were a meta-analysis of caregiver sensitivity or a related construct, focused on children's developmental outcomes, were available in English, French, or Spanish, and were published between 2010 and 2024. Conducted and reported in accordance with PRISMA guidelines, 17 meta-analyses were identified. Using the metaumbrella package in R, we conducted quantitative analyses which demonstrated that caregiver sensitivity was moderately associated with attachment security (r = .25, k = 253, n = 37,444), cognition (r = .23, k = 44, n = 6,777), language skills (r = .26, k = 54, n = 11,136), and weakly associated with socioemotional problems (r = -.07, k = 135, n = 33,305). Narrative analysis of other meta-analyses on caregiver warmth, responsivity, positive and negative parenting, and child outcomes also showed associations in the expected direction. Our findings demonstrate the critical importance of caregiver sensitivity on children's socioemotional and cognitive development, supporting caregiver sensitivity as an important target for early childhood prevention and intervention programs.