People
Graduate Student
Office
408 Wolf Hall
(302) 831-6328
(302) 831-3645 Fax
Primary Advisor
Mary Dozier
Johanna Bick
Interventions for infants in foster care, bio-behavioral correlates of bond formation between foster parents and infants
I am a fourth year doctoral student in Mary Dozier’s lab. I came to the University of Delaware because of my interest in interventions that promote the healthy developmental of infants in foster care. I am also interested in the behavioral and biological factors associated with bond formation between biological and non-biological parents and infants. A recent study that I conducted revealed that mothers produce more oxytocin when they engaged in a close physical interaction with a child they do not know, when compared with their own child. For my dissertation, I will continue this research by investigating whether this trend exists when foster mothers bond with their foster infants. I hope that such research will further our understanding of how bonds form and how bio-behavioral factors may be related to the quality of the bond between foster mothers and foster infants. In the long term, I hope that my research will be useful for identifying healthy or at-risk bonds between foster mothers and children on behavioral and bio-behavioral levels.
Recent Publications
Bick, J. & Dozier, M. (2008, May). Mother-Child Interactions and Maternal Oxytocin Production: The Role of Biological Relatedness. Poster Presented at the Association for Psychological Science. Chicago, IL.
Bick, J. , & Dozier, M. (2008). The role of parent state of mind in an intervention for foster parents. In H. Steele and M. Steele (Eds.), The Adult Attachment Interview in Clinical Context. New York: Guilford.
Bick, J. & Dozier, M. (in press). Book Review: Promoting Positive Parenting: An Attachment-Based Intervention. Adoption Quarterly.
Dozier, M., & Bick, J. (2007). Changing caregivers: Coping with early adversity. Pediatric annals, 36(4), 205-208.
Dozier, M. & Bick, J. (2004) The impact of attachment-based interventions on the quality of attachment among infants and young children. In: Tremblay RE, Barr RG, Peters R., eds. Encyclopaedia on Early Childhood Development. Montreal, Quebec: Centre of Excellence for Early Childhood Development; 2004:1-5.
