Research/Scholarship Interests

Brown's program of research focuses on enhancing maternal competence by assessing mother-premature infant feeding interactions and designing interventions to support competence. She has developed a method of assessing mothers' sensitivity and responsiveness to their infants' feeding. She has examined feeding interactions in real time and used sequential analysis to study the infant's response to the mother's behavior. Brown is interested in factors that influence the feeding interaction as well as the outcomes of those interactions. The factors that influence feeding interactions that she has examined include maternal anxiety, maternal stress, maternal confidence, maternal depressive symptoms, maternal visual focus, the mother's internal working model of feeding and infant health (degree of prematurity, length of hospitalization, respiratory complications and brain injuries). The outcomes of interest are: maternal sensitivity and responsivity, mother-infant synchrony, maternal and infant heart rate variability, infant-regulated and dysregulated behavior, intestinal microbiomes and infant growth. Brown is interested in the effects of prenatal drug exposure on infant mental health and growth and development and has used both qualitative and quantitative designs in her research.