The effectiveness of attachment-based mother-child intervention on the stress-related electrophysiological indices of the preschool children

The present study aims at determining the effectiveness of the attachment-based mother-child intervention on the stress response pattern of the preschoolers with insecure attachment style. The sample of the study included 28 mother-child pairs selected from mothers and their 4-6 year-old children who had reffered to Atieh Clinic, based on their scores on the attachment Q-sort (Waters, 1987). Children’s stress responses were measured before and after the intervention using Stress Response Evaluation (SRE) equipment. The sample was randomly divided into control and experimental groups (14 mother-child pair in each group). The intervention included 6 sessions of group education for the mothers and 6 sessions of group play therapy for the children, and finally 4 sessions of individual psychotherapy for each mother-child pair. Findings indicated that the scores related to temperature indices, skin conductance, respiration rate, and heart rate had been improved in the post-intervention in comparison with the pre-intervention evaluation, and were clinically significant, but none of the indices were statistically significant.