Presenter: Alvin Lengkong – Psychology
Faculty Mentor(s): Andrea Imhof
Session: (In-Person) Poster Presentation
The relationship between exposure to adverse childhood experiences and adult health risk has been well established (Felitti et al., 1998). Fortunately, research has shown that interventions can disrupt this cycle and even reverse these effects. A strong, established relationship between an infant and a caregiver can act as a “buffer” that regulates and dampens the infant’s physiological response to stress (Flannery et al., 2017; Hostinar et al., 2014). The Filming Interactions to Nurture Development (FIND) intervention is a strengths-based video coaching program designed to disrupt the consequences of early exposure to toxic stress and promote naturally occurring, developmentally supportive interactions between infants and their caregivers (Fisher et al., 2016). While the FIND intervention has been shown to be effective in improving certain child and parent outcomes, the literature has often overlooked the importance of cultural factors when implementing parenting interventions. The focus of this paper will be to explore the cultural differences between English- speaking and Spanish-speaking families, and to identify if these differences influenced the intervention’s effects on parent outcomes (e.g. parent sense of competence). Implications and limitations of the FIND intervention’s cultural considerations will be discussed.