Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Social Issues, Birkbeck University of London, UK.
Dev Psychopathol. 2011 Feb;23(1):29-38. doi: 10.1017/S0954579410000623.
Evidence indicates that maternal prenatal distress predicts problematic health and behavioral outcomes in children as well as infant/child cortisol levels and negative emotionality as reviewed here. Evidence that these physiological and behavioral characteristics themselves moderate environmental effects on development in a "for better and for worse" manner consistent with Belsky's differential susceptibility hypothesis and Boyce and Ellis' notions of biological sensitivity to context raises the prospect that susceptibility to rearing is a function of nurture (i.e., fetal environment), consistent with Boyce and Ellis' proposal that plasticity can be shaped by developmental experience. This hypothesis is supported by new findings from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development showing that low birth weight, a marker for an adverse prenatal environment, predicts infant difficult temperament, which is a susceptibility factor that we previously showed as moderating, in a for better and for worse manner, the effects of parenting and child care quality on socioemotional functioning. Moreover, recent Gene × Environment interaction research raises the prospect that some fetuses may be more susceptible to such "prenatal programming of postnatal plasticity" as a result of their genetic makeup. If this proves true, it will be consistent with the conclusion that early developmental plasticity is a function of both nature and nurture and may be evolutionarily adaptive, a further possibility considered in the discussion.
有证据表明，母亲产前的焦虑会预测儿童出现健康和行为问题，以及婴儿/儿童的皮质醇水平和负面情绪，正如这里所综述的那样。这些生理和行为特征本身就可以调节环境对发育的影响，以一种“好坏参半”的方式符合贝斯基的差异化易感性假设和博伊斯和埃利斯的生物对环境敏感的概念，这就提出了这样一种可能性，即易感性是养育的一种功能（即胎儿环境），这与博伊斯和埃利斯提出的可塑性可以通过发育经验来塑造的观点是一致的。这一假设得到了儿童健康与人类发展研究所国家研究所的新发现的支持，该研究表明，低出生体重是不利产前环境的标志，它预测婴儿的困难气质，这是一个易感性因素，我们之前曾表明，它以一种好坏参半的方式调节了育儿和儿童保育质量对社会情感功能的影响。此外，最近的基因与环境相互作用研究提出了这样一种可能性，即由于某些胎儿的遗传构成，它们可能更容易受到这种“产前编程的产后可塑性”的影响。如果这被证明是正确的，这将与早期发育可塑性是自然和养育的共同作用的结论一致，并且可能是进化适应性的，这是讨论中进一步考虑的可能性。
