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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Jenna Charlton, Professor James LawORCiD, Dr Penny Levickis
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Copyright: © 2026 Stanley et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Patterns of parent-child interactions are commonly cited as being predictive of later psychiatric disorders but precisely which elements of these interactions are important is rarely clear, potentially affecting the effective targeting of interventions in young children. The current study aimed to examine the relationship between timely vocal response during parent-child interactions (i.e., the probability of mothers responding to their child within a specified time period and vice versa), and later psychiatric diagnosis. Drawing on data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) cohort, a case control study was conducted based on infant-mother video observations of children assessed for neuropsychiatric disorders using the parent-reported Development and Wellbeing Assessment (DAWBA) at seven years of age (103 controls and 55 cases). Empirical examination suggested that 1 second represented the optimal threshold for maternal responses and 8 seconds for child responses. Only the maternal measure was found to predict later psychiatric disorders, with evidence of associations limited to hyperactivity and conduct disorders. These associations were not sensitive to either maternal education or child sex. The results are discussed in terms of the value of precise interpretation of early mother/child interaction and for the potential for providing targeted intervention to the population concerned.
Author(s): Stanley B, Allely CS, Charlton J, Gillberg C, Law J, Levickis P, McConnachie A, Puckering C, Thompson L, Wilson P
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: PLoS ONE
Year: 2026
Volume: 21
Issue: 7
Online publication date: 01/07/2026
Acceptance date: 14/05/2026
Date deposited: 27/07/2026
ISSN (electronic): 1932-6203
Publisher: Public Library of Science
URL: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0344552
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0344552
Data Access Statement: Data cannot be shared publicly because the study team are not data controllers. The data underlying the results presented in the study are available from the ALSPAC team (https://www.bristol.ac.uk/alspac/researchers/our-data/). Other researchers/academics/professionals would be able to access these data in the same manner as we have done.
PubMed id: 42384656
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