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.

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.

Unpredictable maternal sensory signals in caregiving behavior are associated with child effortful control.

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.

Early-night serial awakenings as a new paradigm for studies on NREM dreaming.

A new experimental paradigm called "Early-Night Serial Awakenings" (ENSA) was explored to find out its strengths and weaknesses for psychophysiological studies of NREM sleep dreaming. Five participants spent 20 experimental nights in the sleep laboratory, and were serially awakened with approximately 24-minute intervals during Stages 2 and 3 of NREM sleep. As a total, 164 awakenings were conducted during the sessions that lasted on average 193 min. Altogether, 30% of NREM sleep awakenings led to dream reports, 39% to reports of white dreaming, and 31% to reports of dreamless sleep. Results also show that sleep EEG spectral power, dream recall frequency as well as dream complexity remained stable throughout the serial awakening sessions. We conclude that, as ENSA dreams appeared to be static and very limited in content, the paradigm we identified could be used in future studies to reveal the psychophysiological mechanisms of relatively simple forms of early-night NREM sleep dreaming.