Household Chaos and Early Childhood Behavior Problems: The Moderating Role of Mother-Child Reciprocity in Lower-Income Families.

OBJECTIVE: The study examined whether mother-child reciprocity across increasingly challenging contexts moderated the association between household chaos and early childhood behavior problems. BACKGROUND: Living in a chaotic household is associated with behavioral dysregulation in childhood. An important goal in discordant household contexts is to establish positive aspects of relationships that are associated with more favorable developmental outcomes. METHOD: The study analyzed data from 127 mother-child dyads participating in the 3-year visit in a study of primarily low-income, African American/Black families in urban areas. Dyads were videotaped during three successive, increasingly challenging, interaction tasks. Multiple regression analyses examined household chaos, dyadic reciprocity, and the interplay of those as predictors of behavior problems. RESULTS: Greater household chaos was associated with more internalizing and externalizing behavior problems. Moderation analyses indicated that dyadic reciprocity during two challenging interaction tasks (but not during free play) attenuated the association between household chaos and internalizing problems. CONCLUSIONS: Household chaos was not associated with internalizing problems among dyads who had a connected, supportive relationship in more challenging interactive contexts. IMPLICATIONS: Improving shared positive affect and dyadic harmony in the parent-child relationship may help protect young children against the negative influence of chaotic contexts.

Using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model to assess maternal and infant contributions to mother-infant affective exchanges during the Still-Face Paradigm.

This study describes maternal and infant contributions to dyadic affective exchanges during the Still-Face Paradigm (SFP) in an understudied mostly low-income sample. One hundred eleven mothers and their 7-month-old infants were videotaped during the SFP to analyze how a social stressor affects mother-infant positive and negative affective exchanges during interaction. The SFP includes 3 episodes: baseline, maternal still-face, and reunion. Maternal and infant positive and negative affect were scored by masked reliable coders. Data were analyzed using the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model to test the hypotheses that each partner's affectivity during the baseline episode would predict their own affectivity during the reunion episode (actor effects). We also expected that each partner's affectivity during the baseline episode would influence the other partner's affectivity during the reunion episodes (partner effects). After controlling for infant sex and maternal education, results provided evidence for actor effects for maternal and infant positive affect, and for partner effects for maternal baseline positive affect to infant positive affect during the reunion. One significant partner effect was observed for negative affect: Infant negativity during baseline predicted greater maternal negativity during reunion. Findings confirm that both mothers and infants contribute to dyadic affective processes during the SFP but specific findings vary depending on the affective valence in question. Clinical implications and future research are discussed.

Prenatal neural origins of infant motor development: Associations between fetal brain and infant motor development.

Functional circuits of the human brain emerge and change dramatically over the second half of gestation. It is possible that variation in neural functional system connectivity in utero predicts individual differences in infant behavioral development, but this possibility has yet to be examined. The current study examines the association between fetal sensorimotor brain system functional connectivity and infant postnatal motor ability. Resting-state functional connectivity data was obtained in 96 healthy human fetuses during the second and third trimesters of pregnancy. Infant motor ability was measured 7 months after birth using the Bayley Scales of Infant Development. Increased connectivity between the emerging motor network and regions of the prefrontal cortex, temporal lobes, posterior cingulate, and supplementary motor regions was observed in infants that showed more mature motor functions. In addition, females demonstrated stronger fetal-brain to infant-behavior associations. These observations extend prior longitudinal research back into prenatal brain development and raise exciting new ideas about the advent of risk and the ontogeny of early sex differences.

ASSOCIATIONS BETWEEN EARLY MATERNAL DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOM TRAJECTORIES AND TODDLERS' FELT SECURITY AT 18 MONTHS: ARE BOYS AND GIRLS AT DIFFERENTIAL RISK?

The goal of this study was to evaluate whether there are sex differences in children's vulnerability to caregiving risk, as indexed by trajectories of maternal depressive symptoms assessed from 2 to 18 months' postpartum, and children's rated attachment security in toddlerhood, adjusting for maternal social support and demographic risk. Analyses utilized longitudinal data collected for 182 African American mother-child dyads from economically diverse backgrounds. Participants were recruited at the time of the child's birth and followed to 18 months' postpartum. Results of conditional latent growth models indicated that an increasing rate of change in level of maternal depressive symptoms over time negatively predicted toddlers' felt attachment security. Higher social support was associated with decreasing levels of maternal depressive symptoms over time whereas higher demographic risk was associated with increasing levels of maternal depressive symptoms. A subsequent multigroup conditional latent growth model revealed that child sex moderated these associations. For male (but not female) children, a rapid increase in maternal depressive symptoms was associated with lower felt attachment security at 18 months. These findings suggest that boys, as compared to girls, may be more vulnerable to early caregiving risks such as maternal depression, with negative consequences for mother-child attachment security in toddlerhood.