While pregnant women are already at-risk for developing symptoms of anxiety and depression, this is heightened during the COVID-19 pandemic. We compared anxiety and depression symptoms, as indicators of psychological distress, before and during COVID-19, and investigated the role of partner, social network and healthcare support on COVID-19-related worries and consequently on psychological distress. A national survey, conducted during the first lockdown in The Netherlands, assessed COVID-19 experiences and psychological distress (N = 1421), whereas a comparison sample (N = 1439) was screened for psychological distress in 2017–2018. During COVID-19, the percentage of mothers scoring above the questionnaires’ clinical cut-offs doubled for depression (6% and 12%) and anxiety (24% and 52%). Women reported increased partner support during COVID-19, compared to pre-pandemic, but decreased social and healthcare support. Higher support resulted in lower COVID-19-related worries, which in turn contributed to less psychological distress. Results suggest that a global pandemic exerts a heavy toll on pregnant women’s mental health. Psychological distress was substantially higher during the pandemic than the pre-pandemic years. We identified a protective role of partner, social, and healthcare support, with important implications for the current and future crisis management. Whether increased psychological distress is transient or persistent, and whether and how it affects the future generation remains to be determined.

Body movements, as well as faces, communicate emotions. Research in adults has shown that the perception of action kinematics has a crucial role in understanding others’ emotional experiences. Still, little is known about infants’ sensitivity to body emotional expressions, since most of the research in infancy focused on faces. While there is some first evidence that infants can recognize emotions conveyed in whole‐body postures, it is still an open question whether they can extract emotional information from action kinematics. We measured electromyographic (EMG) activity over the muscles involved in happy (zygomaticus major, ZM), angry (corrugator supercilii, CS) and fearful (frontalis, F) facial expressions, while 11‐month‐old infants observed the same action performed with either happy or angry kinematics. Results demonstrate that infants responded to angry and happy kinematics with matching facial reactions. In particular, ZM activity increased while CS activity decreased in response to happy kinematics and vice versa for angry kinematics. Our results show for the first time that infants can rely on kinematic information to pick up on the emotional content of an action. Thus, from very early in life, action kinematics represent a fundamental and powerful source of information in revealing others’ emotional state.

From early in life, facial mimicry represents an important example of implicit non-verbal communication. Facial mimicry is conceived of as the automatic tendency to mimic another person’s facial expressions and is thought to serve as a social glue among interaction partners. Although in adults mimicry has been shown to be moderated by the social context and one’s needs to affiliate with others, evidence from behavioural mimicry studies suggest that 3-year-olds do not yet show sensitivity to social dynamics. Here, we examined whether attachment tendencies, as a proxy for interindividual differences in affiliation motivation, modulates facial mimicry in 3-year-olds. Resistant and avoidant insecure attachment tendencies are characterized by high and low affiliation motivation, respectively, and these were hypothesized to lead to either enhancement or suppression of mimicry. Additionally, we hypothesized that these effects will be moderated by inhibitory control skills. Facial mimicry of happy and sad expressions was recorded with electromyography (EMG), attachment tendencies were assessed with a parent-report questionnaire and inhibitory control with the gift delay task. The final sample consisted of 42 children, with overall scores suggesting secure attachment. Our findings revealed that 3-year-olds mimicked happy and sad facial expressions. Moreover, resistant tendencies predicted enhanced sad but not happy facial mimicry, whereas avoidant tendencies were not significantly related to mimicry. These effects were not moderated by inhibitory control skills. In conclusion, these findings provide the first evidence for the modulation of mimicry by attachment tendencies and their underlying motivation for affiliation in young children, specifically for negatively-valenced emotional expressions.

Background The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown pose a threat for adolescents’ mental health, especially for those with an earlier vulnerability. Accordingly, these adolescents may need increased support from family and friends. This study investigated whether family functioning and peer connectedness protects adolescents with earlier internalizing or externalizing symptoms from increased depressive symptoms during the first Dutch COVID-19 lockdown in a low-risk community sample. Methods This sample comprised 115 adolescents (Mage = 13.06; 44% girls) and their parents (N = 111) and is part of an ongoing prospective study on child development. Internalizing and externalizing symptoms were self-reported a year before the COVID-19 lockdown. In an online survey during the first Dutch lockdown (April-May 2020), adolescents reported depressive symptoms and perceived peer connectedness, and parents reported family functioning. Results Twenty-four percent of adolescents reported clinically relevant symptoms of depression during the first COVID-19 lockdown. Depressive symptoms were significantly predicted by earlier internalizing, but not externalizing symptoms. Furthermore, higher quality of family functioning, but not peer connectedness, predicted fewer adolescent depressive symptoms. Family functioning and peer connectedness did not moderate the link between pre-existing internalizing symptoms and later depressive symptoms. Conclusions In a low-risk community sample, one-in-four adolescents reported clinically relevant depressive symptoms at the first COVID-19 lockdown. Higher earlier internalizing symptoms and lower quality of family functioning increased risks. These results indicate that even in low-risk samples, a substantial group of adolescents and their families are vulnerable during times of crisis.

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