A comprehensive model of women’s social cognition and responsiveness to infant crying: Integrating personality, emotion, executive function, and sleep

Leerkes, Esther M.; Bailes, Lauren G.; Swingler, Margaret M.; Augustine, Mairin; Norcross, Pamela Linton

doi:10.1016/j.infbeh.2021.101577

Cited by 9 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Mothers who made more situational attributions about infant distress engaged in fewer unresponsive behaviors (e.g., looked away from infant, passively watched infant). Similarly, Leerkes et al (2021) found that women's positive personality and higher working memory were associated with higher levels of infant-oriented cry processing (i.e., accurate distress detection, empathy, and situational/emotional attributions about distress), which in turn was associated with higher intended responsiveness to infant crying. Emotion dysregulation and deficits in inhibitory control were associated with higher levels of self-oriented cry processing (i.e., anger, anxiety, negative, and emotion minimizing attributions in response to infant distress), which in turn was associated with lower cry responsiveness.…”

Section: Maternal Emotion-related Parenting Efficacymentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Informed by Salter Ainsworth’s view that the prioritization of infant cues and needs is the hallmark feature that distinguishes sensitive mothers from insensitive mothers (Salter Ainsworth et al, 1978), Leerkes et al (e.g., Bailes & Leerkes, 2021; Leerkes et al, 2021) systematically examined the roles of maternal cognitive processing of child distress cues (i.e., cry) in shaping maternal sensitive response to child distress. Notably, they made a nuanced distinction between two types of infant cry processing: infant-oriented cry processing versus mother-oriented cry processing.…”

Section: Review Of Existing Empirical Research That Is Relevant To Th...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Notably, they made a nuanced distinction between two types of infant cry processing: infant-oriented cry processing versus mother-oriented cry processing. As they conceptualized (see Leerkes et al, 2021), infant-oriented cry processing includes some combination of mothers’ accurate distress detection, empathy, situational and emotional attributions about the causes of infant crying, and positive beliefs and goals about infant crying, while mother-oriented cry processing includes some combination of maternal self-focused anger and anxiety in response to crying, negative and minimizing causal attributions about crying, and negative beliefs/goals in response to infant crying.…”

Section: Review Of Existing Empirical Research That Is Relevant To Th...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Origins and development of maternal self-efficacy in emotion-related parenting during the transition to parenthood: Toward an integrative process framework beyond Bandura’s model.

Cao¹,

Leerkes²,

Zhou³

2023

Psychological Review

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For new mothers, coping with infant distress is challenging. Mothers' self-efficacy in emotion-related parenting plays critical roles in shaping their adaptation and children's development. Research on antecedents of maternal parenting self-efficacy has been predominantly based on the global self-efficacy theory outlined by Bandura in the 1970s. Despite the utility of Bandura's theory, subsequent research on emotion-related parenting has highlighted avenues for extending and adapting his model to more adequately elucidate the cognitive, affective, and behavioral processes underlying the development of maternal emotion-related parenting self-efficacy. In view of the basic and applied value of a clearer account of how new mothers' emotion-related parenting self-efficacy emerges and evolves, the increasing amount of research on this topic, and the absence of syntheses of extant studies, we reviewed relevant literature. First, constructs and propositions in prevailing theoretical perspectives are examined for their utility to elucidate the development of new mothers' emotion-related parenting self-efficacy, particularly the implicated cognitive, affective, and behavioral mechanisms and how they work together. Second, a framework is outlined that integrates strengths of various theories to delineate processes underlying the emergence and evolution of new mothers' emotion-related parenting self-efficacy. Third, findings across disparate studies are summarized to provide a foundation for the offered framework. To better inform future research, we demonstrated how to build testable mid-range models with substantive constructs and hypotheses from the proposed framework through deductive theorizing process. We also evaluated the utility of the proposed model for studying new fathers. Last, implications for future research and practice are discussed.

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Section: Maternal Emotion-related Parenting Efficacymentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Review Of Existing Empirical Research That Is Relevant To Th...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Review Of Existing Empirical Research That Is Relevant To Th...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Origins and development of maternal self-efficacy in emotion-related parenting during the transition to parenthood: Toward an integrative process framework beyond Bandura’s model.

Cao¹,

Leerkes²,

Zhou³

2023

Psychological Review

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“…Among mothers, lower EF skills appear to be associated with harsher and more reactive parenting behaviors (e.g., anger, hostility, harsh physical and verbal discipline) and lower levels of warm, supportive, and responsive parenting—both of which are consistently found to be linked with more behavioral and emotional problems in children (e.g., Azar et al, 2017; Crandall et al, 2018). The link between maternal lower EF and harsher parenting is thought to reflect more reactive and less well-regulated parenting behavior, and this appears to be particularly salient in contexts of chronic challenging child behavior problems and other socioeconomic and parenting stressors (e.g., household chaos, income insecurity, poor sleep; Leerkes et al, 2021; Park, 2019).…”

Section: Executive Function and Parentingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Maternal executive function, authoritarian attitudes, and hostile attribution bias as interacting predictors of harsh parenting.

Bertrand¹,

Bell²,

Deater‐Deckard³

2023

Journal of Family Psychology

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Executive function (EF) plays a key role in healthy development and human functioning across multiple domains, including socially, behaviorally, and in the self-regulation of cognition and emotion. Prior research has associated lower levels of maternal EF with harsher and more reactive parenting, and mothers’ social cognitive attributes like authoritarian child-rearing attitudes and hostile attribution biases also contribute to harsh parenting practices. There have been few studies that explore the intersection of maternal EF and social cognitions. The present study addresses this gap by testing whether the relationship between individual differences in maternal EF and harsh parenting behaviors is statistically moderated separately by maternal authoritarian attitudes and hostile attribution bias. Participants were 156 mothers in a socioeconomically diverse sample. Multi-informant and multimethod assessments of harsh parenting and EF were utilized, and mothers self-reported on their child-rearing attitudes and attribution bias. Harsh parenting was negatively associated with maternal EF and hostile attribution bias. Authoritarian attitudes significantly interacted with EF (and the attribution bias interaction was marginally significant) in prediction of variance in harsh parenting behaviors. Commensurate with social information processing theory, EF and social cognitive attributes play critical and distinct roles in the causes of harsh caregiving practices. Findings elucidate that reforming parental social cognitions, in addition to targeting EF, may be effective prevention and intervention methods for yielding more positive parenting behaviors.

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“…The sleep interruption that occurs during the first year of parenthood can be distressing, and studies have found neurobehavioral performance to decline during the postpartum period (Insana et al, 2013). In general, sleep deprivation has been found to affect both attention, memory, emotions, reward circuits, decision-making and resting-state networks by altering brain activity (Chee & Zhou, 2019; Krause et al, 2017; Wang et al, 2022), and lately two studies also found a link between lack of sleep and negative parenting (Chary et al, 2020; Leerkes et al, 2021). However, whether and how this impacts the parental brain is yet to be examined.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A potential marker for problematic mother-infant bonding revealed by magnetoencephalography study of first-time mothers listening to infant cries

Høgholt

Bonetti

Stevner

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Studies using magnetoencephalography (MEG) have identified the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) to be an important early hub for a "parental instinct" in the brain. This complements the finding from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies linking reward, emotion regulation, empathy and mentalisation networks to the "parental brain". Here, we used MEG in 43 first-time mothers listening to infant and adult cry vocalisations to investigate the link with mother–infant postpartum bonding scores and their level of sleep deprivation (assessed using both actigraphy and sleep logs). We found significant differences 800–1000ms after onset of infant compared to adult cries in source–reconstructed brain activity in areas previously linked to the parental brain. Importantly, mothers with weaker bonding scores showed decreased brain responses to infant cries in the auditory cortex, middle and superior temporal gyrus, OFC, hippocampal areas, supramarginal gyrus and inferior frontal gyrus at around 100–200ms after stimulus onset. In contrast, we did not find correlations with sleep deprivation scores. The significant changes in brain processing of infant distress signals could be a novel marker of weaker infant bonding in new mothers and should be investigated in vulnerable populations.

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A comprehensive model of women’s social cognition and responsiveness to infant crying: Integrating personality, emotion, executive function, and sleep

Cited by 9 publications

References 52 publications

Origins and development of maternal self-efficacy in emotion-related parenting during the transition to parenthood: Toward an integrative process framework beyond Bandura’s model.

Origins and development of maternal self-efficacy in emotion-related parenting during the transition to parenthood: Toward an integrative process framework beyond Bandura’s model.

Maternal executive function, authoritarian attitudes, and hostile attribution bias as interacting predictors of harsh parenting.

A potential marker for problematic mother-infant bonding revealed by magnetoencephalography study of first-time mothers listening to infant cries

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