When not helping is nice: Children's changing evaluations of helping during COVID-19.

A key aspect of children's moral and social understanding involves recognizing the value of helpful behaviors. COVID-19 has complicated this process; behaviors generally considered praiseworthy were considered problematic during the COVID-19 pandemic. The present study examined whether 6- to 12-year-olds (N = 228; residing in the United States) adapt their evaluations of helpful behavior in response to shifting norms. Specifically, we presented children with scenarios featuring helpful and unhelpful actions that involved physical interaction (e.g., hugging) or nonphysical interaction (e.g., recruiting a teacher); although all children were tested during the COVID-19 pandemic, stories portrayed individuals either before or during COVID-19. While children generally judged helpfulness positively and unhelpfulness negatively, children exhibited a selective shift in their judgments for COVID-19 scenarios: children considered helpfulness negatively and unhelpfulness positively if helping required physical interaction. These findings demonstrate that children flexibly tune their social evaluations of helping to align with evolving norms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

"There's something inside": Children's intuitions about animate agents.

From infancy, humans have the ability to distinguish animate agents from inert objects, and preschoolers map biological and mechanical insides to their appropriate kinds. However, less is known about how identifying something as an animate agent shapes specific inferences about its internal properties. Here, we test whether preschool children (N = 92; North American population) have specifically biological expectations about animate agents, or if they have more general expectations that animate agents should have an internal source of motion. We presented preschoolers with videos of two puppets: a "self-propelled" fur-covered puppet, and a fur-covered puppet that is seen to be moved by a human actor. In addition, we presented preschoolers with images of a familiar artifact (motorcycle) and familiar animal (sheep). For each item, we asked them to choose what they thought was inside each of these entities: nothing, biological insides, or mechanical insides. Preschoolers were less likely to say that a self-propelled fur-covered object was empty, compared to a fur-covered object that was moved by a human actor, which converges with past work with infants. However, preschoolers showed no specifically biological expectations about these objects, despite being able to accurately match biological insides to familiar animals and mechanical insides to familiar artifacts on the follow-up measure. These results suggest that preschoolers do not have specifically biological expectations about animate agents as a category, but rather general expectations that such agents should not be empty inside.

Measuring the Outcomes of Maternal COVID-19-related Prenatal Exposure (MOM-COPE): study protocol for a multicentric longitudinal project.

INTRODUCTION: COVID-19 is a highly infectious respiratory disease that rapidly emerged as an unprecedented epidemic in Europe, with a primary hotspot in Northern Italy during the first months of 2020. Its high infection rate and rapid spread contribute to set the risk for relevant psychological stress in citizens. In this context, mother-infant health is at risk not only because of potential direct exposure to the virus but also due to high levels of stress experienced by mothers from conception to delivery. Prenatal stress exposure associates with less-than-optimal child developmental outcomes, and specific epigenetic mechanisms (eg, DNA methylation) may play a critical role in mediating this programming association. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: We present the methodological protocol for a longitudinal, multicentric study on the behavioural and epigenetic effects of COVID-19-related prenatal stress in a cohort of mother-infant dyads in Northern Italy. The dyads will be enrolled at 10 facilities in Northern Italy. Saliva samples will be collected at birth to assess the methylation status of specific genes linked with stress regulation in mothers and newborns. Mothers will provide retrospective data on COVID-19-related stress during pregnancy. At 3, 6 and 12 months, mothers will provide data on child behavioural and socioemotional outcomes, their own psychological status (stress, depressive and anxious symptoms) and coping strategies. At 12 months, infants and mothers will be videotaped during semistructured interaction to assess maternal sensitivity and infant's relational functioning. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: This study was approved by the Ethics Committee (Pavia). Results will be published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at national and international scientific conferences. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT04540029; Pre-results.

Will prenatal exposure to SARS-CoV-2 define a birth cohort with accelerated aging in the century ahead?

The 1918 Influenza pandemic had long-term impacts on the cohort exposed in utero which experienced earlier adult mortality, and more diabetes, ischemic heart disease, and depression after age 50. It is possible that the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic will also have long-term impacts on the cohort that was in utero during the pandemic, from exposure to maternal infection and/or the stress of the pandemic environment. We discuss how COVID-19 disease during pregnancy may affect fetal and postnatal development with adverse impacts on health and aging. Severe maternal infections are associated with an exaggerated inflammatory response, thromboembolic events, and placental vascular malperfusion. We also discuss how in utero exposure to the stress of the pandemic, without maternal infection, may impact health and aging. Several recently initiated birth cohort studies are tracking neonatal health following in utero severe acute respiratory syndrome virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) exposure. We suggest these cohort studies develop plans for longer-term observations of physical, behavioral, and cognitive functions that are markers for accelerated aging, as well as methods to disentangle the effects of maternal infection from stresses of the pandemic environment. In utero exposure to COVID-19 disease could cause developmental difficulties and accelerated aging in the century ahead. This brief review summarizes elements of the developmental origins of health, disease, and ageing and discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic might exacerbate such effects. We conclude with a call for research on the long-term consequences of in utero exposure to maternal infection with COVID-19 and stresses of the pandemic environment.

Impact of Covid-19 in pregnancy on mother's psychological status and infant's neurobehavioral development: a longitudinal cohort study in China.

BACKGROUND: Evidence concerning the long-term impact of Covid-19 in pregnancy on mother's psychological disorder and infant's developmental delay is unknown. METHODS: This study is a longitudinal single-arm cohort study conducted in China between May 1 and July 31, 2020. Seventy-two pregnant patients with Covid-19 participated in follow-up surveys until 3 months after giving birth (57 cases) or having abortion (15 cases). We collected data from medical records regarding Covid-19, delivery or abortion, testing results of maternal and neonatal specimens, and questionnaires of quarantine, mother-baby separation, feeding, and measuring of mothers' mental disorders and infants' neurobehavioral disorders. RESULTS: All cases infected in the first trimester and 1/3 of cases infected in the second trimester had an abortion to terminate the pregnancy. 22.2% of pregnant patients were suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or depression at 3 months after delivery or induced abortion. Among 57 live births, only one neonate was positive of nucleic acid testing for throat swab, but negative in repeated tests subsequently. The median duration of mother-baby separation was 35 days (interquartile range 16 to 52 days). After the termination of maternal quarantine, 49.1% of mothers chose to prolong the mother-baby separation (median 8 days; IQR 5 to 23 days). The breastfeeding rate was 8.8% at 1 week after birth, 19.3% at the age of 1 month, and 36.8% at the age of 3 months, respectively. The proportion of "monitoring" and "risk" in the social-emotional developmental domain at the age of 3 months was 22.7% and 63.6%, respectively. After the adjustment of preterm, neonatal sex, admitted to NICU, and the mother's Covid-19 condition, the negative associations were significantly identified (p < 0.05) between mother-baby separation days and three developmental domains: communication, gross motor, and personal-social. CONCLUSIONS: There is no definite evidence on vertical transmission of SARS-CoV-2. In addition to control infection risk, researchers and healthcare providers should pay more attention to maternal mental health and infant's feeding, closeness with parents, and early development.

Maternal choline and respiratory coronavirus effects on fetal brain development.

Prenatal COVID-19 infection is anticipated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to affect fetal development similarly to other common respiratory coronaviruses through effects of the maternal inflammatory response on the fetus and placenta. Plasma choline levels were measured at 16 weeks gestation in 43 mothers who had contracted common respiratory viruses during the first 6-16 weeks of pregnancy and 53 mothers who had not. When their infants reached 3 months of age, mothers completed the Infant Behavior Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R), which assesses their infants' level of activity (Surgency), their fearfulness and sadness (Negativity), and their ability to maintain attention and bond to their parents and caretakers (Regulation). Infants of mothers who had contracted a moderately severe respiratory virus infection and had higher gestational choline serum levels (≥7.5 mM consistent with U.S. Food and Drug Administration dietary recommendations) had significantly increased development of their ability to maintain attention and to bond with their parents (Regulation), compared to infants whose mothers had contracted an infection but had lower choline levels (<7.5 mM). For infants of mothers with choline levels ≥7.5 µM, there was no effect of viral infection on infant IBQ-R Regulation, compared to infants of mothers who were not infected. Higher choline levels obtained through diet or supplements may protect fetal development and support infant early behavioral development even if the mother contracts a viral infection in early gestation when the brain is first being formed.