FinnBrain Birth Cohort Study, Department of Clinical Medicine, Turku Brain and Mind Center, University of Turku, Turku, Finland; Department of Medical Psychology, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, a corporate member of Freie Universität Berlin, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, and Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), Berlin, Germany..
Department of Psychology, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL, United States.
J Affect Disord. 2019 Oct 1;257:589-597. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2019.07.055. Epub 2019 Jul 5.
Prior work has examined the links between pre- and postnatal maternal distress and infant negative affectivity; however, there is little understanding about how the continuity of infant exposure to pre- and postnatal maternal distress relates to infant development. This study investigated the continuity of maternal pre- and postnatal depressive and anxiety symptoms and their relations with infant fear among 391 mother-infant dyads. An additional aim was to consider infant sex as a moderating factor.
Maternal anxiety and depressive symptoms were measured during gestational weeks 14, 24 and 34 and 3 and 6 months postpartum. Subsequently, infant fear was measured using mother reports (IBQ-R) at 6 months and in a laboratory setting (Lab-TAB Masks episode) at 8 months. Using growth mixture modeling, a three-class model describing the course of maternal symptoms across pregnancy and the early postnatal period was identified, consisting of mothers with "Consistently Low Distress", "Prenatal-Only Distress", and "Consistently High Distress".
Infant girls exposed to prenatal-only maternal distress were higher in observed fear than infant boys exposed to prenatal-only distress. Infant girls exposed to consistently high distress also showed lower observed fear than their counterparts exposed to prenatal-only maternal distress.
The main limitation of the study is the relatively small group size within the Consistently High subgroup.
The findings suggest that girls might be particularly sensitive to maternal distress, and that prenatal-only and continuous distress exposure are differentially related to female infant fear.
先前的研究已经探讨了产前和产后母亲焦虑与婴儿负性情绪之间的联系；然而，对于婴儿持续暴露于产前和产后母亲焦虑与婴儿发育之间的关系，我们知之甚少。本研究调查了 391 对母婴对子代中母亲产前和产后抑郁和焦虑症状的连续性及其与婴儿恐惧的关系。另一个目的是考虑婴儿性别作为一个调节因素。
在妊娠第 14、24 和 34 周以及产后第 3 个月和第 6 个月测量母亲的焦虑和抑郁症状。随后，在 6 个月时通过母亲报告（IBQ-R）和 8 个月时在实验室环境（Lab-TAB 面具 episode）测量婴儿恐惧。使用增长混合建模，确定了描述妊娠和产后早期母亲症状过程的三类别模型，包括“持续低压力”、“仅产前压力”和“持续高压力”的母亲。
暴露于仅产前母亲压力的女婴比暴露于仅产前压力的男婴在观察到的恐惧中更高。暴露于持续高压力的女婴比暴露于仅产前母亲压力的女婴观察到的恐惧也更低。
本研究的主要局限性是 Consistently High 亚组内的相对较小的样本量。
研究结果表明，女孩可能对母亲的压力特别敏感，仅产前和持续的压力暴露与女婴的恐惧有不同的关系。
