Caregiver cognitive sensitivity: Measure development and validation in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) settings

•A novel measure capturing childcare educators interaction-styles is proposed.•Educator Cognitive Sensitivity (ECS) is a brief and cost-effective measure.•The ECS scale shows promising psychometric properties.•Results indicate educators within classrooms are very different from one another.•Outcomes suggest reconsidering assessing interactions at the classroom-level.