Antecedents of maternal pregnancy-related anxiety trajectories: The FinnBrain birth cohort study.

OBJECTIVE: Little is known about the normative courses of pregnancy-related anxiety throughout pregnancy and their antecedents. We examined in a large scale pregnancy cohort which potentially distinct trajectories of pregnancy-related anxiety across pregnancy can be identified, and which factors predict these trajectories. METHODS: A general sample of pregnant women (n = 2928) from the FinnBrain Birth Cohort participated in this study. Several questionnaires were filled in at 14, 24, and 34 weeks of gestation, including the pregnancy-related anxiety questionnaire-revised as main outcome. Latent Growth Mixture Modeling was applied to identify the trajectories of pregnancy-related anxiety across pregnancy, and t-tests and chi-quare tests were conducted to find antecedents of these trajectories. RESULTS: Two distinct trajectories were identified: (1) a low symptoms group, N = 2594 (88.6%), with lower and slightly increasing levels of pregnancy-related anxiety (2) a moderately-high symptoms group, N = 334 (11.4%) reported higher and slightly decreasing levels of anxiety. Correlates of the moderately-high anxious group included a lower monthly income, drinking alcohol or smoking in early pregnancy, more daily hassles and less joy, more early life adversities, younger age, primiparity, single parenthood, using depression medication, and having higher scores on depression and general anxiety. CONCLUSIONS: Although the majority of pregnant women fall within a low risk trajectory of pregnancy-related anxiety, another group with consistently higher levels of pregnancy anxiety throughout pregnancy may need more clinical attention, as their high pregnancy-related anxiety scores may indicate a risk profile that includes a variety of general and more pregnancy-specific risk factors, which together can negatively affect fetal and infant development and behavior.

Mother-Infant Interaction and Maternal Postnatal Psychological Distress Associate with Child's Social-Emotional Development During Early Childhood: A FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study.

We studied the effects of mother-infant interaction and maternal pre- and postnatal psychological distress on children's social-emotional problems and competences, as well as whether interaction quality moderates the association between distress and children's outcomes. Maternal pre- and postnatal psychological distress were measured using the SCL and EPDS questionnaires, whereas mother-infant interaction was measured when the child was 8 months old using the EA Scales. Children's social-emotional development was measured using the BITSEA questionnaire at 2 years old and using the SDQ questionnaire at 4 years old, where higher maternal structuring was associated with fewer social-emotional problems in children and higher maternal sensitivity was associated with greater social-emotional competence in children at 2 years old. Further, higher postnatal distress was found associated with greater social-emotional problems at 2 years old, though neither these effects nor moderating effects at 4 years old were observed after multiple-comparison corrections. Our findings support direct associations of both mother-infant interaction and maternal postnatal psychological distress with children's social-emotional development during toddlerhood.

Structural brain correlates of non-verbal cognitive ability in 5-year-old children: Findings from the FinnBrain birth cohort study.

Non-verbal cognitive ability predicts multiple important life outcomes, for example, school and job performance. It has been associated with parieto-frontal cortical anatomy in prior studies in adult and adolescent populations, while young children have received relatively little attention. We explored the associations between cortical anatomy and non-verbal cognitive ability in 165 5-year-old participants (mean scan age 5.40 years, SD 0.13; 90 males) from the FinnBrain Birth Cohort study. T1-weighted brain magnetic resonance images were processed using FreeSurfer. Non-verbal cognitive ability was measured using the Performance Intelligence Quotient (PIQ) estimated from the Block Design and Matrix Reasoning subtests from the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI-III). In vertex-wise general linear models, PIQ scores associated positively with volumes in the left caudal middle frontal and right pericalcarine regions, as well as surface area in left the caudal middle frontal, left inferior temporal, and right lingual regions. There were no associations between PIQ and cortical thickness. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine structural correlates of non-verbal cognitive ability in a large sample of typically developing 5-year-olds. The findings are generally in line with prior findings from older age groups, with the important addition of the positive association between volume / surface area in the right medial occipital region and non-verbal cognitive ability. This finding adds to the literature by discovering a new brain region that should be considered in future studies exploring the role of cortical structure for cognitive development in young children.

Infant gut microbiota and negative and fear reactivity.

BACKGROUND: Studies indicate that gut microbiota is related to neurodevelopmental and behavioral outcomes. Accordingly, early gut microbiota composition (GMC) has been linked to child temperament, but research is still scarce. The aim of this study was to examine how early GMC at 2.5 months is associated with child negative and fear reactivity at 8 and 12 months since they are potentially important intermediate phenotypes of later child psychiatric disorders. METHODS: Our study population was 330 infants enrolled in the longitudinal FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study. Gut microbiota composition was analyzed using stool sample 16s rRNA sequencing. Negative and fear reactivity were assessed using the Laboratory Temperament Assessment Battery (Lab-TAB) at child's age of 8 months (n =150) and the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised Short Form (IBQ-R SF) at child's age of 12 months (n = 276). CONCLUSIONS: We found a positive association between alpha diversity and reported fear reactivity and differing microbial community composition based on negative reactivity for boys. Isobutyric acid correlated with observed negative reactivity, however, this association attenuated in the linear model. Several genera were associated with the selected infant temperament traits. This study adds to the growing literature on links between infant gut microbiota and temperament informing future mechanistic studies.

Associations between observed and reported infant negative affectivity, fear and self-regulation, and early communicative development-Evidence from the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study.

Self-regulation and language are intertwined abilities, but the nature of their relations in early childhood when both skills are still emerging is insufficiently understood. Our knowledge of the relations between early negative affectivity and preverbal and verbal communicative development is still limited. Further, observed and reported temperament capture how aspects of temperament operate in different settings but are rarely used in parallel in studies examining early language. During the period of rapid development, longitudinal studies are needed to identify early risk factors for delayed communicative development. We studied relations between aspects of emerging self-regulation and negative affectivity using both observations at 8 months and mother-reports at 6 and 12 months, and communicative development measured by gesturing and vocabulary at 14 and vocabulary at 30 months in 183 children. Mother-reported self-regulation was related to a higher use of communicative gestures and observed self-regulation by gaze aversion to poorer receptive and expressive vocabulary at 14 months, but neither was significantly associated with vocabulary at 30 months. We found little evidence for associations between negative affectivity and fear in infancy and communicative development. Our findings highlight different aspects of self-regulation as both potential risk and protective factors for communicative development. Mixed results indicate a need for a more detailed examination of different strategies of self-regulation in different conditions and developmental stages to yield a deeper understanding of the relations between self-regulation in infancy and communicative development.

Subcortical and hippocampal brain segmentation in 5-year-old children: Validation of FSL-FIRST and FreeSurfer against manual segmentation.

Developing accurate subcortical volumetric quantification tools is crucial for neurodevelopmental studies, as they could reduce the need for challenging and time-consuming manual segmentation. In this study, the accuracy of two automated segmentation tools, FSL-FIRST (with three different boundary correction settings) and FreeSurfer, were compared against manual segmentation of the hippocampus and subcortical nuclei, including the amygdala, thalamus, putamen, globus pallidus, caudate and nucleus accumbens, using volumetric and correlation analyses in 80 5-year-olds. Both FSL-FIRST and FreeSurfer overestimated the volume on all structures except the caudate, and the accuracy varied depending on the structure. Small structures such as the amygdala and nucleus accumbens, which are visually difficult to distinguish, produced significant overestimations and weaker correlations with all automated methods. Larger and more readily distinguishable structures such as the caudate and putamen produced notably lower overestimations and stronger correlations. Overall, the segmentations performed by FSL-FIRST's default pipeline were the most accurate, whereas FreeSurfer's results were weaker across the structures. In line with prior studies, the accuracy of automated segmentation tools was imperfect with respect to manually defined structures. However, apart from amygdala and nucleus accumbens, FSL-FIRST's agreement could be considered satisfactory (Pearson correlation > 0.74, intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) > 0.68 and Dice score coefficient (DSC) > 0.87) with highest values for the striatal structures (putamen, globus pallidus, caudate) (Pearson correlation > 0.77, ICC > 0.87 and DSC > 0.88, respectively). Overall, automated segmentation tools do not always provide satisfactory results, and careful visual inspection of the automated segmentations is strongly advised.

Maternal prenatal psychological distress associates with offspring early-life wheezing - FinnBrain Birth Cohort.

BACKGROUND: Exposure to prenatal maternal psychological distress may contribute to the development of childhood atopic disorders. Little is known about the importance of distress severity and its duration for the risk. Our aim was to investigate how chronic maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms across gestation influence the risk of wheezing and eczema at child age 24 months. METHODS: The study population was drawn from the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study, including 1305 mother-infant dyads followed across gestation until the child age of 24 months when the outcomes were mother-reported wheezing ever and doctor-diagnosed eczema. To investigate the risk of wheezing phenotypes, wheezing with and without eczema was separated. Maternal distress was assessed with the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale for depressive and the Symptom Checklist-90 for anxiety symptoms three times during pregnancy, and the chronicity was demonstrated using symptom trajectories composed by latent growth mixture modeling. RESULTS: Of the children, 219/1305 (17%) had wheezing ever and 285/1276 (22%) had eczema. Risk of wheezing ever was elevated with maternal consistently high depressive symptoms (adjusted odds ratio 2.74; 95% confidence interval 1.37-5.50) or moderate and increasing anxiety symptoms (1.94; 1.06-3.54, respectively). Similarly, wheezing without eczema was associated with consistently high depressive (3.60; 1.63-7.94, respectively) and moderate and increasing anxiety symptoms (2.43; 1.21-4.91, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: Maternal chronic psychological distress across gestation was associated with toddler wheezing and especially wheezing without other atopic features (eczema). This finding supports the theory of intrauterine programming effect by maternal psychological distress on offspring immune system and respiratory morbidity.

Individual differences in pupil dilation to others' emotional and neutral eyes with varying pupil sizes.

Sensitivity to others' emotional signals is an important factor for social interaction. While many studies of emotional reactivity focus on facial emotional expressions, signals such as pupil dilation which can indicate arousal, may also affect observers. For example, observers' pupils dilate when viewing someone with dilated pupils, so-called pupillary contagion. Yet it is unclear how pupil size and emotional expression interact as signals. Further, examining individual differences in emotional reactivity to others can shed light on its mechanisms and potential outcomes. In the current study, adults' (N = 453) pupil size was assessed while they viewed images of the eye region of individuals varying in emotional expression (neutral, happy, sad, fearful, angry) and pupil size (large, medium, small). Participants showed pupillary contagion regardless of the emotional expression. Individual differences in demographics (gender, age, socioeconomic status) and psychosocial factors (anxiety, depression, sleep problems) were also examined, yet the only factor related to pupillary contagion was socioeconomic status, with higher socioeconomic status predicting less pupillary contagion for emotionally-neutral stimuli. The results suggest that while pupillary contagion is a robust phenomenon, it can vary meaningfully across individuals.

Behavioral Regulatory Problems Are Associated With a Lower Attentional Bias to Fearful Faces During Infancy.

To investigate the role of early regulatory problems (RP), such as problems in feeding, sleeping, and calming down during later development, the association between parent-reported RP at 3 months (no-RP, n = 110; RP, n = 66) and attention to emotional faces at 8 months was studied. Eight-month-old infants had a strong tendency to look at faces and to specifically fearful faces, and the individual variance in this tendency was assessed with eye tracking using a face-distractor paradigm. The early RPs were related to a lower attention bias to fearful faces compared to happy and neutral faces after controlling for temperamental negative affectivity. This suggests that early RPs are related to the processing of emotional information later during infancy.

Maternal Depressive Symptoms During the Pre- and Postnatal Periods and Infant Attention to Emotional Faces.

We examined how infants' attentional disengagement from happy, fearful, neutral, and phase-scrambled faces at 8 months, as assessed by eye tracking, is associated with trajectories of maternal depressive symptoms from early pregnancy to 6 months postpartum (decreasing n = 48, increasing n = 34, and consistently low symptom levels n = 280). The sample (mother-infant dyads belonging to a larger FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study) was collected between 5/2013-6/2016. The overall disengagement probability from faces to distractors was not related to maternal depressive symptoms, but fear bias was heightened in infants whose mothers reported decreasing or increasing depressive symptoms. Exacerbated attention to fearful faces in infants of mothers with depressive symptoms may be independent of the timing of the symptoms in the pre- and postnatal stages.

Human milk cortisol concentration predicts experimentally induced infant fear reactivity: moderation by infant sex.

Little consideration has been given to the possibility of human infant development being shaped via lactocrine programming, and by breast milk cortisol levels specifically. Despite animal models indicating that glucocorticoid (GC) exposure via lactation might modify brain development and behavior, only one study has reported that milk cortisol levels were positively associated with infant negative affectivity, especially fearfulness and sadness-early emerging risk factors for internalizing difficulties such as anxiety. The aim of the current study was to investigate whether human milk cortisol is associated with mother-reported fearfulness and experimentally induced infant fear reactivity. Mother-infant dyads (n = 65) enrolled in the FinnBrain Cohort Study participated. Breast milk samples were obtained 2.5 months postpartum, and milk cortisol concentrations were ascertained using validated luminescence immunoassay methodology. Infant fear reactivity was assessed using maternal reports 6 months postpartum and in a laboratory 8 months postpartum. There was a significant interaction between infant sex and milk cortisol such that higher milk cortisol was related to higher infant fear reactivity in a laboratory setting in girls (ß = 0.36, p = .04) but not in boys (ß = -0.15, p = .40). Milk cortisol was not associated with mother-reported infant fearfulness. Results suggest that higher human milk cortisol concentrations are associated with elevated experimentally induced fear in infancy. Findings support lactocrine programming, and suggest that mothers may "communicate" vital information about stressful environments via cortisol contained in breast milk, shaping girls' early emotional reactivity.

Sense of coherence, its components and depressive and anxiety symptoms in expecting women and their partners - A FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study.

OBJECTIVE: Expecting mothers with high sense of coherence (SOC) exhibit improved physical, emotional, and childbearing health. However, the dimensions of SOC and the factor structure of the SOC-13 scale during prenatal period is slightly known. Especially the differences in experiencing SOC and its components (comprehensibility, manageability, meaningfulness) among both expecting parents (mothers and fathers) is poorly understood. The association between SOC and mood disorder symptoms (depression and anxiety) during pregnancy is scarcely studied. METHODS: The structure of the SOC-13 scale, differences in SOC experiences, and the associations between SOC and depressive and anxiety symptoms were studied in a sample of 2784 pregnant women (mothers) and 1661 men/partners (fathers) belonging to the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study. Self-reports (SOC-13, EPDS, SCL-90: ANX) from gestational week 24 were used. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and invariance testing was carried out to investigate the factorial structure of SOC-13 among both groups (mothers and fathers). Group comparisons were used to study differences in the level of SOC among mothers vs. fathers, low vs. high depression and anxiety subgroups, and multiparous vs. nulliparous mothers. RESULTS: A two-factor model for SOC-13 consisting of comprehensibility-manageability and meaningfulness fitted the data best. Mothers reported higher levels of meaningfulness, whereas fathers reported higher levels of comprehensibility-manageability. SOC was significantly higher among fathers vs. mothers, but mothers with depressive symptoms reported higher SOC than fathers with depressive symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: During pregnancy, SOC can be viewed as a two-dimensional (vs. one- or three-dimensional) concept, and mothers and fathers have differences in the components of SOC. Importantly, mothers vs. fathers with depressive symptoms express higher overall SOC indicating that pregnancy may relate to higher than usual SOC especially among women with psychological distress. Understanding how expecting mothers and fathers experience SOC during pregnancy, particularly in relation to depressive symptoms, helps midwives and maternity care providers to focus health promoting support more precisely.

Lower maternal emotional availability is related to increased attention toward fearful faces during infancy.

It has been suggested that infants' age-typical attention biases for faces and facial expressions have an inherent connection with the parent-infant interaction. However, only a few previous studies have addressed this topic. To investigate the association between maternal caregiving behaviors and an infant's attention for emotional faces, 149 mother-infant dyads were assessed when the infants were 8 months. Caregiving behaviors were observed during free-play interactions and coded using the Emotional Availability Scales. The composite score of four parental dimensions, that are sensitivity, structuring, non-intrusiveness, and non-hostility, was used in the analyses. Attention disengagement from faces was measured using eye tracking and face-distractor paradigm with neutral, happy, and fearful faces and scrambled-face control pictures as stimuli. The main finding was that lower maternal emotional availability was related to an infant's higher attention to fearful faces (p = .042), when infant sex and maternal age, education, and concurrent depressive and anxiety symptoms were controlled. This finding indicates that low maternal emotional availability may sensitize infants' emotion processing system for the signals of fear at least during this specific age around 8 months. The significance of the increased attention toward fearful faces during infancy is an important topic for future research.

Trajectories of maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms and child's socio-emotional outcome during early childhood.

Maternal symptoms of depression and anxiety during pregnancy and early postnatal years are suggested to impose differential negative effects on child's socio-emotional development depending on the characteristics of the symptoms, such as timing, intensity, and persistence. The aim of this study was to identify trajectories of maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms from pregnancy until 2 years postpartum and to examine their relationship with child socio-emotional problems and competence at 2 and 5 years of age. The sample included 1208 mother-infant dyads from FinnBrain Birth Cohort study. Latent growth mixture modelling (LGMM) was utilized to model the trajectories of maternal depressive symptoms, measured using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), and general anxiety, measured with Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90) at 14, 24, and 34 weeks' gestation (gw) and at 3, 6 and 24 months postpartum. Maternal depression was also assessed at 12 months. Child socio-emotional problems and competence were evaluated using the Brief Infant Toddler Social Emotional Assessment (BITSEA) at 2 years and Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) at 5 years. Relevant background factors and maternal concurrent symptomatology were controlled for. The trajectories of maternal depressive and anxiety symptoms were associated negatively with differential aspects of child long term socio-emotional outcomes from early toddlerhood to preschool years. The trajectories of depressive symptoms and high-level persistent symptoms that continued from pregnancy to two years of child age had the strongest negative association with child outcomes. This highlights the importance of identifying and treating maternal symptomatology, especially that of depression, as early as possible.

Two-Year Trajectories of Dental Anxiety in Parents and Their Association with Parents' and Children's Oral Healthcare Procedures in FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study.

We aimed to identify parents' dental anxiety trajectories and the association of the trajectories with the number of parents' and their children's oral healthcare procedures in the FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study. Dental anxiety was measured with the Modified Dental Anxiety Scale at gestational weeks (gw) 14 and 34, as well as 3 and 24 months (mo) after childbirth. Oral healthcare procedures from gw14 to 24 mo were obtained from the national patient data register and categorized as preventive and treatment. Trajectories were identified with latent growth mixture modelling for 2068 fathers and 3201 mothers. Associations between trajectories and procedures adjusted for education were analyzed using unordered multinomial logit models. Fathers' trajectories were stable low (80.1%), stable high (3.4%), stable moderate (11.0%), moderate increasing (3.9%) and high decreasing (1.6%). Mothers' trajectories were stable low (80.7%), stable high (11.2%), moderate increasing (5.3%) and high decreasing (2.8%). Mothers with decreasing dental anxiety had a higher number of preventive and treatment procedures. Fathers with decreasing dental anxiety had a higher number of preventive and treatment procedures, while fathers with increasing dental anxiety had fewer procedures. Children of mothers with stable low dental anxiety had higher number of preventive procedures. There seems to be a two-way association between dental anxiety trajectories and oral healthcare procedures.

Negative associations between maternal prenatal hair cortisol and child socioemotional problems.

Maternal prenatal distress can participate in the programming of offspring development, in which exposure to altered maternal long-term cortisol levels as measured by hair cortisol concentrations (HCC) may contribute. Yet, studies investigating whether and how maternal prenatal HCC associates with problems in child socioemotional development are scarce. Furthermore, questions remain regarding the timing and potential sex-specificity of fetal exposure to altered cortisol levels and whether there are interactions with maternal prenatal distress, such as depressive symptoms. The subjects were drawn from those FinnBrain Birth Cohort families that had maternal reports of child socioemotional problems (the Brief Infant-Toddler Social and Emotional Assessment [BITSEA] at 2 years and/or the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire [SDQ] at 5 years) as follows: HCC1 population: maternal mid-pregnancy HCC measured at gestational week 24 with 5 cm segments to depict cortisol levels from the previous five months (n = 321); and HCC2 population: end-of-pregnancy HCC measured 1-3 days after childbirth (5 cm segment; n = 121). Stepwise regression models were utilized in the main analyses and a sensitivity analysis was performed to detect potential biases. Negative associations were observed between maternal HCC2 and child BITSEA Total Problems at 2 years but not with SDQ Total difficulties at 5 years, and neither problem score was associated with HCC1. In descriptive analyses, HCC2 was negatively associated with Internalizing problems at 2 years and SDQ Emotional problems at 5 years. A negative association was observed among 5-year-old girls between maternal HCC1 and SDQ Total Difficulties and the subscales of Conduct and Hyperactivity/inattentive problems. When interactions were also considered, inverse associations between HCC2 and BITSEA Internalizing and Dysregulation Problems were observed in subjects with elevated prenatal depressive symptoms. It was somewhat surprising that only negative associations were observed between maternal HCC and child socioemotional problems. However, there are previous observations of elevated end-of-pregnancy cortisol levels associating with better developmental outcomes. The magnitudes of the observed associations were, as expected, mainly modest. Future studies with a focus on the individual changes of maternal cortisol levels throughout pregnancy as well as studies assessing both maternal and child HPA axis functioning together with child socioemotional development are indicated.

Prenatal Stress and the Developing Brain: Postnatal Environments Promoting Resilience.

Heightened maternal stress during pregnancy is associated with atypical brain development and an elevated risk for psychopathology in offspring. Supportive environments during early postnatal life may promote brain development and reverse atypical developmental trajectories induced by prenatal stress. We reviewed studies focused on the role of key early environmental factors in moderating associations between prenatal stress exposure and infant brain and neurocognitive outcomes. Specifically, we focused on the associations between parental caregiving quality, environmental enrichment, social support, and socioeconomic status with infant brain and neurocognitive outcomes. We examined the evidence that these factors may moderate the effects of prenatal stress on the developing brain. Complementing findings from translational models, human research suggests that high-quality early postnatal environments are associated with indices of infant neurodevelopment that have also been associated with prenatal stress, such as hippocampal volume and frontolimbic connectivity. Human studies also suggest that maternal sensitivity and higher socioeconomic status may attenuate the effects of prenatal stress on established neurocognitive and neuroendocrine mediators of risk for psychopathology, such as hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis functioning. Biological pathways that may underlie the effects of positive early environments on the infant brain, including the epigenome, oxytocin, and inflammation, are also discussed. Future research in humans should examine resilience-promoting processes in relation to infant brain development using large sample sizes and longitudinal designs. The findings from this review could be incorporated into clinical models of risk and resilience during the perinatal period and used to design more effective early programs that reduce risk for psychopathology.

Mother-infant interaction and maternal postnatal psychological distress are associated with negative emotional reactivity among infants and toddlers- A FinnBrain Birth Cohort study.

Studies have reported mixed findings regarding the effects of mother-infant interaction and maternal distress on children's negative emotional reactivity. In the current study (N = 134 and 107), we examined the effects of maternal Emotional Availability (sensitivity, structuring, non-intrusiveness and non-hostility) and maternal psychological distress on negative reactivity among children in the FinnBrain birth cohort study. In addition, the possible moderating effect of mother-infant interaction on the associations between maternal psychological distress and children's negative reactivity was examined. We used questionnaires to asses maternal psychological distress, observations of mother-infant interaction and observations as well maternal reports of child temperament to overcome the key limitations of many studies relying on single-method assessments. Our results showed that higher maternal sensitivity and structuring at 8 months of child's age were associated with lower mother-reported negative reactivity among children at 24 months. Higher maternal postnatal distress associated with higher parent-reported negative reactivity in children at 12 and 24 months of age when the effects of prenatal distress and the quality of mother-infant interaction were controlled for. Mother-infant interaction and maternal psychological distress did not associate with observations of child negative reactivity. We found no moderation effects of mother-infant interaction regarding the associations between maternal distress and children's negative emotional reactivity. Our findings reflect the importance of developing interventions to reduce the maternal distress symptoms while enhancing maternal sensitivity and structuring to prevent the possible harmful effects of these on child negative reactivity.

Higher attention bias for fear at 8 months of age is associated with better socioemotional competencies during toddlerhood.

BACKGROUND: In previous studies, an attention bias for signals of fear and threat has been related to socioemotional problems, such as anxiety symptoms, and socioemotional competencies, such as altruistic behaviors in children, adolescents and adults. However, previous studies lack evidence about these relations among infants and toddlers. AIMS: Our aim was to study the association between the individual variance in attention bias for faces and, specifically, fearful faces during infancy and socioemotional problems and competencies during toddlerhood. STUDY DESIGN AND SUBJECTS: The study sample was comprised of 245 children (112 girls). We explored attentional face and fear biases at the age of 8 months using eye tracking and the face-distractor paradigm with neutral, happy and fearful faces and a scrambled-face control stimulus. Socioemotional problems and competencies were reported by parents with the Brief Infant and Toddler Social Emotional Assessment (BITSEA) when children were 24 months old. OUTCOME MEASURES AND RESULTS: A higher attentional fear bias at 8 months of age was related to higher levels of socioemotional competence at 24 months of age (ß = .18, p = .008), when infants' sex and temperamental affectivity, maternal age, education and depressive symptoms were controlled. We found no significant association between attentional face or fear bias and socioemotional problems. CONCLUSIONS: We found that the heightened attention bias for fearful faces was related to positive outcomes in early socioemotional development. Longitudinal study designs are needed to explore the changes in the relation between the attention bias for fear or threat and socioemotional development during early childhood.