Search

Introduction: Paternal mental health has been associated with adverse consequences on offspring psychosocial development, and family environmental factors may partly explain those associations. To clarify this, we need comprehensive prospective studies, particularly in middle-childhood when the child enters school and is expected to make use of behavioral and cognitive skills as part of their interactions and learning., Method: Using data from a sub-sample of the prospective 3D birth cohort study comprised of mother-father-child triads, and a follow-up of the parents and the children at 6-8 years of age ( n = 61; 36 boys, 25 girls), we examined whether paternal anxious and depressive symptoms measured during the pregnancy period (i.e., prenatally) or concurrently when the child was assessed at 6-8 years old were associated with children's cognition/behavior., Results: In contrast to our hypotheses, we found that greater prenatal paternal depressive symptoms predicted fewer child behavioral difficulties; and that greater concurrent childhood paternal depression or anxiety symptoms were associated with higher child full-scale IQ, controlling for the equivalent maternal mental health assessment and parental education. Father parenting perception did not mediate these associations, nor were they moderated by maternal mental health at the concurrent assessment, or paternal ratings of marital relationship quality., Discussion: These findings suggest that higher symptoms of paternal mental health symptoms are associated with fewer child behavioral difficulties and higher cognitive performance in middle childhood. Potential clinical implications and future research directions are discussed., Competing Interests: The authors declare that this work was funded by Merck, Sharp & Dohme corp. (T-VN), Canadian Institutes of Health Research (T-VN, MY5-155371), Montreal General Hospital Foundation, McGill University Health Center Foundation (T-VN), and Fonds de Recherche Québec Santé (T-VN, 36776). The 3D and 3D-Transition Studies were both supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CRI 88413 and PJT-148551, respectively). The authors also declare that they received salary support through the Graduate Excellence Fellowship in Mental Health Research, awarded by the Department of Psychiatry at McGill University (CC), and a Ferring Postdoctoral Fellowship in Reproductive Health awarded by McGill Faculty of Medicine (SLJ). JRS was supported by the Fonds Monique Gaumond pour la Recherche en Maladies Affectives. The funders were not involved in the study design, collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article or the decision to submit it for publication. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Jones, Caccese, Davis, Lew, Elgbeili, Herba, Barnwell, Robert, Gavanski, Horsley, Fraser, Da Costa, Séguin, Nguyen and Montreuil.)

Objective: We aim to clarify whether type and timing of mental health symptoms in early pregnancy distinctly contribute to maternal-fetal vascular function, independent from the psychotropic medications given to treat these conditions., Methods: Data from a prospective cohort study (n = 1678) were used to test whether self-reported fears about giving birth and depressive symptoms prior to 16 weeks of gestation were associated with vascular outcomes predictive of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy (HDP) i.e., systolic and diastolic blood pressure (BP); uterine artery pulsatility index (UAPI); umbilical artery resistance index (UmbARI); and urine protein creatinine ratio. Multiple linear regressions models and mediation models were used to test for associations between predictors and outcomes, controlling for previously identified risk factors for vascular dysfunction such as maternal age and history of infertility., Results: Fears about giving birth in early pregnancy were inversely associated with UmbARI (β = -0.33, p = 0.03, df = 51) mid- to late-pregnancy (≥20 weeks). Depressive symptoms in early pregnancy were also inversely associated with maternal systolic BP (β = -0.13, p = 0.01, df = 387) and diastolic BP (β = -0.10, p = 0.04, df = 387) during the first trimester., Conclusions: While fears about giving birth in early pregnancy were associated with lower vascular resistance in the fetal-placental unit, early depressive symptoms were associated with lower maternal vascular tone. At the very least, our results support the notion that early maternal psychological distress is unlikely to account for the development of HDP later during pregnancy and provide preliminary evidence to support distinct roles of pregnancy-related anxiety and depressive symptoms in maternal-fetal vascular function., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

The role of counterfactual thinking in 2 emotions--shame and guilt--was examined. In 1 series of studies, Ss read about situations evocative of shame and guilt or described personal experiences of guilt or shame. They then generated counterfactual alternatives to "undo" the distressing outcomes. Consistent with predictions derived from Tangney (1991), Ss tended to undo shame situations by altering qualities of the self and to undo guilt situations by altering actions. In a 2nd series of studies, Ss imagined themselves in a situation that could evoke either guilt or shame. Ss were then led to mutate the self or behavior to undo the situation. Mutation manipulations amplified shame and guilt such that the former Ss anticipated feeling greater shame, whereas the latter anticipated feeling greater guilt. The role of counterfactual thinking in specific emotions and in differentiating shame- and guilt-prone personalities is discussed.

This article proposes a novel framework for understanding judgments of probability. Both accurate and inaccurate judgments are conceptualized in terms of the sets of information, or sample spaces, on which they are based. When appropriate sample spaces are easily accessed from memory (e.g., when they correspond to natural cognitive categories), people will make relatively accurate judgments; otherwise, people may substitute more accessible but inappropriate sample spaces and make judgment errors. In 3 experiments, the sample space framework was applied to account for the base rate fallacy. Results showed that (a) people spontaneously access sample spaces that correspond to natural categories, (b) reliance on inappropriate sample spaces produces the base rate fallacy, and (c) highlighting appropriate sample spaces improves the sensitivity of people's judgments to base rates. Discussion extends the framework to explain accuracy and error in other judgment domains.

People commonly violate a basic rule of probability, judging a conjunction of events to be more probable than at least 1 of its component events. Many manifestations of this conjunction fallacy have been ascribed to people's reliance on the representativeness heuristic for judging probability. Some conjunction fallacies, however, have been ascribed to the incorrect rules people use to combine probabilities. In 2 experiments, representativeness was pitted against probability combination to determine the contributions of each to the fallacy. Even for exemplar representativeness problems, the fallacy stemmed primarily from the application of incorrect combination rules. Representativeness seemed to be involved only insofar as it influenced the probabilities of a conjunction's component events. Implications of these findings are discussed for the representativeness account of judgmental errors and the relation between similarity and probability.