Developmental origins of infant emotion regulation: Mediation by temperamental negativity and moderation by maternal sensitivity.

Abstract

Emotion regulation is essential to cognitive, social, and emotional development and difficulties with emotion regulation portend future socioemotional, academic, and behavioral difficulties. There is growing awareness that many developmental outcomes previously thought to begin their development in the postnatal period have their origins in the prenatal period. Thus, there is a need to integrate evidence of prenatal influences within established postnatal factors, such as infant temperament and maternal sensitivity. In the current study, prenatal depression, pregnancy anxiety, and diurnal cortisol patterns (i.e., the cortisol awakening response (CAR) and diurnal slope) were assessed in 254 relatively low-risk mother-infant pairs (primarily White, middle-class) in early (M = 15 weeks) and late pregnancy (M = 33 weeks). Mothers reported on infant temperamental negativity (Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised) at 3 months. At 6 months, maternal sensitivity (Parent Child Interaction Teaching Scale) and infant emotion regulation behavior (Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery) were assessed. Greater pregnancy anxiety in early pregnancy and a blunted CAR in late pregnancy predicted higher infant temperamental negativity at 3 months, and those infants with higher temperamental negativity used fewer attentional regulation strategies and more avoidance (i.e., escape behavior) at 6 months. Furthermore, this indirect effect was moderated by maternal sensitivity whereby infants with elevated negativity demonstrated maladaptive emotion regulation at below average levels of maternal sensitivity. These findings suggest that the development of infant emotion regulation is influenced by the ways that prenatal exposures shape infant temperament and is further modified by postnatal caregiving. (PsycINFO Database Record

Exposure to a natural disaster during pregnancy and young children’s behaviour: prenatal and postnatal pathways, and the role of maternal mind-mindedness

“…The current results are consistent with Thomas et al (2017), who found that maternal sensitivity buffered the indirect effect of maternal pregnancy anxiety exposure on infant emotion regulation at 6 months via infant temperament at 3 months, with no evidence of moderation of the direct prenatal effect. Nevertheless, the present findings conflict with another study within the QF2011 cohort that found that maternal structuring behaviours buffered the direct effects of flood-related prenatal maternal subjective stress on toddler language development at 30 months (Austin et al, 2017).…”

“…These studies find support for a moderating role of infant attachment , maternal sensitivity (Grant, McMahon, Reilly, & Austin, 2010) and maternal stroking of newborn infants H. Sharp et al (2012) on indices of early behavioural functioning. However, some studies also find conflicting evidence, and a lack of moderating effects of maternal sensitivity has also been reported (Kaplan, Evans, & Monk, 2008;Thomas, Letourneau, Campbell, Tomfohr-Madsen, & Giesbrecht, 2017).…”

Maternal sensitivity and social support protect against childhood atopic dermatitis

“…As a result, healthy maternal–infant relationships are typically characterized as sensitive and responsive interactions that are attentive to the infants’ needs while remaining non-intrusive and non-controlling, and contribute to the regulation of the infant’s response to stress before the infant is physiologically able to self-regulate [31–33]. In other words, infants develop their ability to regulate their stress response through their relationship with their maternal caregivers, especially during the first 3 years of life [34, 35]. Caregivers who do not provide sensitive, responsive, non-controlling care promote development of precocious self-regulation, which may have physiological costs, including suppressed immune development [36, 37].…”

Emotion understanding and maternal sensitivity as protective factors against hostile attribution bias in anger‐prone children

“…Several studies have also documented how maternal sensitivity may moderate the association between child temperament and various behavioral outcomes. For example, infants with higher temperamental negativity at 3 months showed greater maladaptive emotion regulation at 6 months, but only when concurrent maternal sensitivity was low (Thomas, Letourneau, Campbell, Tomfohr‐Madsen, & Giesbrecht, ). Similarly, infants with high distress to limitations at 5 months were more likely to demonstrate aggressive behavior at 2.5 years, but only when mothers drew their infants’ attention to frustrating events at 6 months—a behavior that discouraged self‐regulation in infants (Crockenberg, Leerkes, & Jó, ).…”