Child temperament, caregiver sensitivity and cortisol baseline

Last August we went to Porto (Portugal) to participate in EECERA Annual Conference. This Conference is the largest and most significant early years’ research conference in Europe, regularly attracting more than 600 researcher delegates from all over the world.

We presented a poster with the next title: Differential susceptibility hypothesis:  Children`s temperament moderates the relation between caregiver’s sensitivity and cortisol baseline’s change at child care centre.

In this work our intention was to make known the two main findings of one of our research:

1. Cortisol baseline reverse when children spend a full day at child care centre
2. Child temperament moderates the relation between caregiver sensitivity and cortisol baseline’s change at child care centre. That is, when child temperament is difficult: caregiver’s high sensitivity is a protective variable because cortisol baseline does not change; caregiver’s low sensitivity is a risk variable because cortisol baseline changes.