Environmental Sensitivity and Parenting: A Systematic Review of Mediating Mechanisms in Child Development

Children learn how to make sense of the world around them from their caregivers. Yet not all children respond to their environment in the same way. Environmental sensitivity frameworks suggest that some children can be more responsive than others to what happens around them, particularly within parenting contexts. Research shows that highly sensitive children are more influenced by parenting quality, but we still do not know much about the processes that explain why this happens. This systematic review examined empirical studies exploring environmental sensitivity, parenting, and child developmental outcomes, with a focus on mediating mechanisms. The review was guided by three main questions: how parenting is operationalized, which mediating mechanisms have been tested, and what patterns emerge across parenting, mechanisms, and outcomes. Sixteen studies were included in the review following the PRISMA guidelines, published between 2016 and 2025, with participants age range from infancy through adolescence. The majority of studies employed longitudinal designs and primarily relied on questionnaire-based assessments. Environmental sensitivity was mainly assessed within the Sensory Processing Sensitivity framework, typically using the Highly Sensitive Child scale, with some studies employing temperament or biological indicators. Parenting was most often operationalized as behavioral caregiving quality (styles, warmth, observed behavior), assessed through parent-report questionnaires or observational coding. A few studies examined it within family stress or transactional models. Developmental outcomes mainly included internalizing and externalizing symptoms, as well as social competence and prosocial behavior, measured through parent or self-report measures. Across studies, moderation analyses consistently indicated that environmental sensitivity functioned as a conditional factor, with highly sensitive children showing amplified responses to variations in caregiving quality. However, only 6 out of 16 studies formally tested mediation. When mechanisms were tested, they mostly involved cognitive-emotional processes, such as rumination and stress appraisal, or broader family stress dynamics. Indirect effects were more consistently observed for internalizing than for externalizing outcomes, suggesting that cognitive-emotional processing may represent a particularly relevant pathway linking parenting and emotional adjustment in highly sensitive children. Overall, findings indicate that environmental sensitivity shapes for whom parenting matters most, whereas explanatory mechanisms remain comparatively underdeveloped. These results suggest that interventions may be particularly beneficial for highly sensitive children when targeting cognitive-emotional and family stress processes. Future research should prioritize longitudinal designs integrating sensitivity with clearly specified cognitive-emotional and relational mechanisms to clarify how parenting influences developmental outcomes.