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Emerging evidence suggests that exposure to unpredictable patterns of maternal sensory signals during infancy is associated with child neurodevelopment, including poorer effortful control. However, longitudinal effects on child development and possible sex differences are understudied. The aims of the present study were to explore whether exposure to unpredictable maternal sensory signals during infancy is related to child effortful control at 5 years of age and whether child sex moderates these associations. In addition, we examined how exposure to very high vs. low/moderate unpredictability using categorical cut-offs is related to child effortful control. Participants (133 mother-child pairs, all Caucasian) were drawn from the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study in Finland. Maternal sensory signals (auditory, visual, tactile) were coded from the 10-min free-play episode on a moment-on-moment basis using Observer XT 11 (Noldus), and the unpredictability of maternal sensory signals was characterized as the entropy rate when the infant was 8 months of age. Child effortful control was assessed via mother reports using the Child Behavior Questionnaire very short form (CBQ-VSF) when the child was 5 years old. Correlational analyses showed that higher unpredictability of maternal sensory signals had a modest association with children's poorer effortful control at 5 years of age. Notably, the linear regression model showed that child sex moderated these associations, as higher exposure to unpredictable maternal sensory signals was related to poorer effortful control among males, but not among females. Moreover, the general linear model showed that exposure to very high unpredictability was associated with poorer child effortful control at 5 years of age and remained significant when adjusted for possible confounding factors. These results are in line with previous findings and suggest that the unpredictability of maternal sensory signals is potentially an important aspect of early caregiving behavior associated with the development of child effortful control., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist., (Copyright: © 2022 Holmberg et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)

Objective: At the broadest level, self-regulation (SR) refers to a range of separate, but interrelated, processes (e.g., working memory, inhibition, and emotion regulation) central for the regulation of cognition, emotion, and behavior that contribute to a plethora of health and mental health outcomes. SR skills develop rapidly in early childhood, but their neurobiological underpinnings are not yet well understood. The amygdala is one key structure in negative emotion generation that may disrupt SR. In the current study, we investigated the associations between neonatal amygdala volumes and mother-reported and observed child SR during the first 3 years of life. We expected that larger neonatal amygdala volumes would be related to poorer SR in children. Method: We measured amygdala volumes from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) performed at age M = 3.7 ± 1.0. We examined the associations between the amygdala volumes corrected for intracranial volume (ICV) and (a) parent-reported indicators of SR at 6, 12, and 24 months ( N = 102) and (b) observed task-based indicators of SR (working memory and inhibitory control) at 30 months of age in a smaller subset of participants ( N = 80). Results: Bilateral neonatal amygdala volumes predicted poorer working memory at 30 months in girls, whereas no association was detected between amygdalae and inhibitory control or parent-reported SR. The left amygdala by sex interaction survived correction for multiple comparisons. Conclusions: Neonatal amygdala volume is associated with working memory, particularly among girls, and the association is observed earlier than in prior studies. Moreover, our findings suggest that the neural correlates for parent-reported, compared to observed early life SR, may differ. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Maternal postpartum depression is a prominent risk factor for aberrant child socioemotional development, but there is little understanding about the neural phenotypes that underlie infant sensitivity to maternal depression. We examined whether newborn white matter fractional anisotropy (FA), a measure of white matter maturity, moderates the association between maternal postpartum depressive symptoms and infant negative reactivity at 6 months. Participants were 80 mother-infant dyads participating in a prospective population-based cohort, and included families whose newborns underwent a magnetic resonance/diffusion tensor imaging scan at 2-5 weeks of age and whose mothers reported their own depressive symptoms at 3 and 6 months postpartum and infant negative emotional reactivity at 6 months. The whole-brain FA moderated the association between maternal depressive symptoms and mother-reported infant negative reactivity at 6 months after adjusting for the covariates. Maternal depressive symptoms were positively related to infant negative reactivity among infants with high or average FA in the whole brain and in corpus callosum and cingulum, but not among those with low FA. The link between maternal depressive symptoms and infant negative reactivity was moderated by newborn FA. The variation in white matter microstructure might play a role in child susceptibility to parental distress., (© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press.)

Background: Prior work has examined the links between pre- and postnatal maternal distress and infant negative affectivity; however, there is little understanding about how the continuity of infant exposure to pre- and postnatal maternal distress relates to infant development. This study investigated the continuity of maternal pre- and postnatal depressive and anxiety symptoms and their relations with infant fear among 391 mother-infant dyads. An additional aim was to consider infant sex as a moderating factor., Methods: Maternal anxiety and depressive symptoms were measured during gestational weeks 14, 24 and 34 and 3 and 6 months postpartum. Subsequently, infant fear was measured using mother reports (IBQ-R) at 6 months and in a laboratory setting (Lab-TAB Masks episode) at 8 months. Using growth mixture modeling, a three-class model describing the course of maternal symptoms across pregnancy and the early postnatal period was identified, consisting of mothers with "Consistently Low Distress", "Prenatal-Only Distress", and "Consistently High Distress"., Results: Infant girls exposed to prenatal-only maternal distress were higher in observed fear than infant boys exposed to prenatal-only distress. Infant girls exposed to consistently high distress also showed lower observed fear than their counterparts exposed to prenatal-only maternal distress., Limitations: The main limitation of the study is the relatively small group size within the Consistently High subgroup., Conclusions: The findings suggest that girls might be particularly sensitive to maternal distress, and that prenatal-only and continuous distress exposure are differentially related to female infant fear., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: Early life experiences have persisting influence on brain function throughout life. Maternal signals constitute a primary source of early life experiences, and their quantity and quality during sensitive developmental periods exert enduring effects on cognitive function and emotional and social behaviors. Here we examined if, in addition to established qualitative dimensions of maternal behavior during her interactions with her infant and child, patterns of maternal signals may contribute to the maturation of children's executive functions. We focused primarily on effortful control, a potent predictor of mental health outcomes later in life., Methods: In two independent prospective cohorts in Turku, Finland (N = 135), and Irvine, CA, USA (N = 192) that differed significantly in race/ethnicity and sociodemographic parameters, we assessed whether infant exposure to unpredictable patterns of maternal-derived sensory signals portended poor effortful control., Outcomes: In both the Irvine and Turku cohorts, unpredictable sequences of maternal behavior during infancy were associated with worse effortful control at one year of age. Longitudinal analyses demonstrated that this association persisted for as long as each cohort was assessed-until two years of age in the Turku cohort and to 9.5 years in the Irvine cohort. The relation of unpredictable maternal signals during infancy and the measures of executive function persisted after adjusting for covariates., Interpretations: The consistency of our findings across two cohorts from different demographic backgrounds substantiated the finding that patterns, and specifically unpredictable sequences, of maternal behaviors may influence the development of executive functions which may be associated with vulnerability to subsequent psychopathology. FUND: This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) awards P50MH096889, HD051852, NS041298, HD02413, HD050662, HD065823, and by the FinnBrain funders: Academy of Finland (129839, 134950, 253270, 286829, 287908, 308176, 308252), Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation, Signe and Ane Gyllenberg Foundation, Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation, and State Research Grants (P3498, P3654)., (Copyright © 2019. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Background: Biases in socio-emotional attention may be early markers of risk for self-regulation difficulties and mental illness. We examined the associations between maternal pre- and postnatal anxiety symptoms and infant attention patterns to faces, with particular focus on attentional biases to threat, across male and female infants., Methods: A general population, Caucasian sample of eight-month old infants (N = 362) were tested using eye-tracking and an attention disengagement (overlap) paradigm, with happy, fearful, neutral, and phase-scrambled faces and distractors. Maternal self-reported anxiety symptoms were assessed with the Symptom Checklist-90/anxiety subscale at five time points between gestational week 14 and 6 months postpartum., Results: Probability of disengagement was lowest for fearful faces in the whole sample. Maternal pre- but not postnatal anxiety symptoms associated with higher threat bias in infants, and the relation between maternal anxiety symptoms in early pregnancy and higher threat bias in infants remained significant after controlling for maternal postnatal symptoms. Maternal postnatal anxiety symptoms, in turn, associated with higher overall probability of disengagement from faces to distractors, but the effects varied by child sex., Limitations: The small number of mothers suffering from very severe symptoms. No control for the comorbidity of depressive symptoms., Conclusions: Maternal prenatal anxiety symptoms associate with infant's heightened attention bias for threat. Maternal postnatal anxiety symptoms, in turn, associate with infant's overall disengagement probability differently for boys and girls. Boys may show enhanced vigilance for distractors, except when viewing fearful faces, and girls enhanced vigilance for all socio-emotional stimuli. Long-term implications of these findings remain to be explored., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: Maternal prenatal stress has been related to infant negative affect. However, it is still unclear how different sources of maternal prenatal stress such as depressive, anxiety and pregnancy-specific anxiety symptoms are associated with reactivity outcomes. This study aimed to test the associations between different sources of maternal prenatal stress and the aspects of infant emotional reactivity at six months., Method: Our study population (n=282) was drawn from the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study. Prenatal stress was measured by questionnaires on maternal depression, general anxiety and pregnancy-specific anxiety at three time points across pregnancy (gwk 14, 24, 34). Based on the symptom scores, the sample was divided into mothers with high stress during pregnancy (n=110) and mothers with low stress during pregnancy (n=172). Mother-reported infant emotional reactivity and its subscales were measured six months postpartum., Results: After controlling for background variables and maternal postnatal symptoms, overall negative emotional reactivity (β=0.20, p<0.01), and its aspects fearfulness (β=0.15, p=.057) and falling reactivity (β=-0.22, p<0.01), were predicted by only pregnancy-specific anxiety. No significant predictors were found for infant positive reactivity after adjusting for confounders., Limitations: Mother reports of both maternal symptoms and infant reactivity were used, which might increase the risk of reporting bias., Conclusions: The findings suggest that mothers experiencing stress should be provided intervention during pregnancy, and that screening should have a particular focus on pregnancy-related worries., (Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)