On screen experiment showed that becoming a parent for the first time shifted people's priorities from themselves to their infant at 1 year of age.

AIM: This study used a screen-based perceptual matching task to see how non-parents, people trying to get pregnant, and those who had given birth prioritised shapes and labels relating to self or infant conditions. METHODS: The study took place at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark from December 2016 to November 2021. Recruitment methods included family planning clinics, social media, online recruitment systems and local bulletin boards. The modified perceptual matching task linked five shapes to five labels, including self and infant. RESULTS: We found that 67 males and females with a mean age of 24.4 ± 3 years, who had no plans to become parents in the near future, reacted faster and more accurately to self-shapes and labels (p < 0.001), which validated the experiment. The 56 participants aged 27.1 ± 4.4 years who were actively trying to become parents showed no statistically significant prioritisation. A subset of 21 participants aged 28.7 ± 4.4 years showed faster response times to infant than self-shapes and labels 1 year after giving birth (p < 0.001). CONCLUSION: Healthy first-time parents showed faster reactions to infant than self-conditions 1 year after giving birth, in contrast to the other two groups.

Sleep-deprived new mothers gave their infants a higher priority than themselves.

AIM: To understand why some parents are less sensitive to infant cues than others, we need to understand how healthy parents respond, and how this is influenced by factors such as sleep deprivation. Here, we examined whether sleep deprivation alters the self-infant-prioritisation effect in a population of first-time mothers within their first year of motherhood. METHODS: The study took place at Aarhus University Hospital in Denmark from August 2018 until February 2020. First-time mothers were recruited through Midwife clinics, national and social media. All women completed a perceptual matching task including an infant category. The mothers were divided into two groups depending on their sleep status: below or above 7 h of average night-time sleep, measured with actigraphy. RESULTS: Forty-eight first-time mothers at the age of 29.13 ± 3.87 years were included. In the sleep-deprived group, the infant category was statistically significantly higher in accuracy (p = 0.005) and faster in reaction time (p < 0.001) than all other categories. In contrast, in the non-sleep-deprived group, there was no statistically significant difference between self and infant, neither in accuracy, nor reaction time. CONCLUSION: Sleep-deprived new mothers strongly prioritised infants over self, while non-sleep-deprived new mothers showed no prioritisation of the self over the infant.