King Suzanne, Laplante David P
Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Québec, Canada.
Stress. 2005 Mar;8(1):35-45. doi: 10.1080/10253890500108391.
There exists considerable research on the effects of prenatal maternal stress on offspring. Animal studies, using random assignment to experimental and control groups, demonstrate the noxious effects of prenatal maternal stress on physical, behavioural and cognitive development. The generalizability of these results to humans is problematic given that cognitive attributions moderate reactions to stressors. In humans, researchers have relied upon maternal anxiety or exposure to life events as proxies for the stressors used with animals. Yet, the associations between maternal anxiety or potentially non-independent life events and problems in infants are confounded by genetic transmission of temperament from mother to child. We summarize the literature on prenatal maternal stress and infant cognitive development, leading to the conclusion that the human literature lacks the ability to separate the effects of the objective exposure to a stressor and the mother's subjective reaction. We then describe our prospective Project Ice Storm in which we are following 150 children who were exposed in utero to a natural disaster. We demonstrate significant effects of the objective severity of exposure on cognitive and language development at age two years with important moderating effects of the timing during pregnancy. The implications of our findings are discussed.
关于产前母亲压力对后代的影响，已有大量研究。动物研究通过随机分配实验组和对照组，证明了产前母亲压力对身体、行为和认知发展的有害影响。鉴于认知归因会调节对应激源的反应，这些结果对人类的普遍适用性存在问题。在人类研究中，研究人员依赖母亲的焦虑或经历生活事件作为动物实验中所使用应激源的替代指标。然而，母亲的焦虑或潜在的非独立生活事件与婴儿问题之间的关联，因母亲向孩子的气质遗传而变得复杂。我们总结了关于产前母亲压力与婴儿认知发展的文献，得出的结论是，人类文献缺乏区分客观暴露于应激源的影响和母亲主观反应的能力。然后我们描述了我们的前瞻性“冰暴计划”，在该计划中我们追踪了150名在子宫内暴露于自然灾害的儿童。我们证明了暴露的客观严重程度对两岁儿童认知和语言发展有显著影响，且孕期暴露时间具有重要的调节作用。我们讨论了研究结果的意义。
