Prenatal Reflective Functioning and Development of Aggression in Infancy: the Roles of Maternal Intrusiveness and Sensitivity.

Maternal reflective functioning (RF) has been associated with quality of parent-child interactions and child development. This study investigated whether prenatal RF predicted the development of infant physical aggression and whether maternal sensitivity and/or intrusiveness mediated or moderated this association. The sample consisted of 96 first-time mothers (M = 22.57 years, SD = 2.13) and their infants (54 % male). Prenatal RF was measured with an interview, maternal behavior was observed during free play at 6 months post-partum, and infant physical aggression was assessed at 6, 12, and 20 months using maternal reports. Multivariate analyses of variance showed that relatively poor prenatal RF was related to relatively high infant physical aggression. These associations were moderated by maternal intrusiveness, with significant differences in physical aggression between RF-groups reportedly only in the absence of intrusiveness. Generally, mothers reported an increase in physical aggression between 6 and 12 months, except when they had both low RF-skills and were relatively less sensitive. It is concluded that prenatal RF is associated with (development of) infant physical aggression, and may be targeted in intervention programs aimed at reducing early physical aggression. Less adequate parenting, however, may counteract the beneficial effects of good RF, or obscure insight into children's behavioral development.

Familial transmission of depression and antisocial behavior symptoms: disentangling the contribution of inherited and environmental factors and testing the mediating role of parenting.

BACKGROUND: Genetic and environmental influences on child psychopathology have been studied extensively through twin and adoption designs. We offer a novel methodology to examine genetic and environmental influences on the intergenerational transmission of psychopathology using a sample of parents and children conceived through in vitro fertilization (IVF). METHOD: The sample included families with children born through IVF methods, who varied as to whether the child was genetically related or unrelated to the rearing mother and father (mother genetically related, n=434; mother genetically unrelated, n=127; father genetically related, n=403; father genetically unrelated, n=156). Using standardized questionnaires, mothers and fathers respectively reported on their own psychopathology (depression, aggression), their parenting behavior toward their child (warmth, hostility) and their child's psychopathology (depression, aggression). A cross-rater approach was used, where opposite parents reported on child symptoms (i.e. fathers reported on symptoms for the mother-child dyad, and vice versa). RESULTS: For mother-child dyads, a direct association between mother depression and child depression was observed among genetically unrelated dyads, whereas a fully mediated path was observed among genetically related dyads through mother-to-child hostility and warmth. For father-child dyads, direct and mediated pathways were observed for genetically related father-child dyads. For aggression, the direct association between parent aggression and child aggression was fully mediated by parent-to-child hostility for both groups, indicating the role of parent-to-child hostility as a risk mechanism for transmission. CONCLUSIONS: A differential pattern of genetic and environmental mediation underlying the intergenerational transmission of psychopathology was observed among genetically related and genetically unrelated father-child and mother-child dyads.

The links between prenatal stress and offspring development and psychopathology: disentangling environmental and inherited influences.

BACKGROUND: Exposure to prenatal stress is associated with later adverse health and adjustment outcomes. This is generally presumed to arise through early environmentally mediated programming effects on the foetus. However, associations could arise through factors that influence mothers' characteristics and behaviour during pregnancy which are inherited by offspring. METHOD: A 'prenatal cross-fostering' design where pregnant mothers are related or unrelated to their child as a result of in vitro fertilization (IVF) was used to disentangle maternally inherited and environmental influences. If links between prenatal stress and offspring outcome are environmental, association should be observed in unrelated as well as related mother-child pairs. Offspring birth weight and gestational age as well as mental health were the outcomes assessed. RESULTS: Associations between prenatal stress and offspring birth weight, gestational age and antisocial behaviour were seen in both related and unrelated mother-offspring pairs, consistent with there being environmental links. The association between prenatal stress and offspring anxiety in related and unrelated groups appeared to be due to current maternal anxiety/depression rather than prenatal stress. In contrast, the link between prenatal stress and offspring attention deficit hyperactivity disorder was only present in related mother-offspring pairs and therefore was attributable to inherited factors. CONCLUSIONS: Genetically informative designs can be helpful in testing whether inherited factors contribute to the association between environmental risk factors and health outcomes. These results suggest that associations between prenatal stress and offspring outcomes could arise from inherited factors and post-natal environmental factors in addition to causal prenatal risk effects.

Intellectual problems shown by 11-year-old children whose mothers had postnatal depression.

The aim of the study was to examine long-term sequelae in the children of mothers who were depressed at 3 months postpartum. In a community sample from two general practices in South London. 149 women were given psychiatric interviews at 3 months postpartum and 132 of their children (89 %) were tested at 11 years of age. The children of women who were depressed at 3 months postpartum had significantly lower IQ scores. They also had attentional problems and difficulties in mathematical reasoning. and were more likely than other children to have special educational needs. Boys were more severely affected than girls, with the sex difference most pronounced on Performance IQ. The links between postnatal depression and the children's intellectual problems were not mediated by parental IQ and were not accounted for by measures of social disadvantage nor by the mother's later mental health problems. Breastfeeding did not remove the effect of the mother's illness on Full Scale IQ, but exerted its own influence on Verbal IQ and appeared to mediate the link with mathematical ability. The findings show that adverse experiences in infancy predict cognitive ability and academic performance a decade later.

Toddlers' use of force against familiar peers: a precursor of serious aggression?

Possible precursors of serious aggression were identified in toddlers' use of force against peers. Instances of grabbing objects and hitting peers were recorded in a sample of 66 British 18- to 30-month-olds, observed at home with familiar peers and seen again 6 months later. Mothers rated aggressiveness in the context of other personality traits. Girls and boys did not differ in average levels of aggression, nor were they rated differently by the mothers. However, the observed rate of hitting peers and mothers' ratings of aggressiveness were stable over 6 months for girls, but not for boys. Toddlers who were especially sensitive to peers' possible intentions hit their peers more often. They were also more likely to use force proactively, 6 months later.

Parents' judgements about young children's problems: why mothers and fathers might disagree yet still predict later outcomes.

Correlates of parents' ratings of behavioural problems were explored in a sample of 93 British families, in which mothers and fathers rated their children at the time of the fourth birthday on the Achenbach Child Behavior Checklist. As in other samples, there was moderate convergence in mothers' and fathers' total problem scores, but also signs that they were reporting different sorts of problems linked to different influences. The father's rating was primarily associated with the child's cognitive ability. The mother's rating was primarily affected by her own mental state and view of her marriage. The father's but not the mother's rating provided unique information that predicted teachers' reports of the children's problems 7 years later. In general, parents' ratings of preschool children's problems reflect particular informants' perspectives on family life.

Prosocial action in very early childhood.

We tested a model of prosocial development, which predicted that prosocial action might decline, not increase, throughout childhood, becoming increasingly selective, individual, gender-related, and linked to emotional dysregulation. Sixty-six focal children at 18, 24, or 30 months of age were observed at home with familiar peers and then again 6 months later. Episodes of peer interaction were analysed for instances of sharing. The predicted decline in sharing with age was qualified by cohort differences and many associations with gender. Most children shared less as they grew older, but the oldest girls slightly increased their rate of sharing over time. As peer relationships developed, girls were more likely to share with other girls; boys were more likely to show reciprocity in sharing. Individual differences in sharing were moderately stable over time and linked to another form of prosocial action, sensitivity to the peer's distress. As predicted, children who shared at higher rates were rated more negatively by their mothers. The positive relationship between prosocial action and mothers' ratings of negative personality traits was especially strong for boys.

The impact of postnatal depression on boys' intellectual development.

A follow-up study was carried out to investigate the children of 204 mothers who had previously participated in a study of their mental health during pregnancy and the first postnatal year. One hundred and seventy two children, 170 mothers, and 99 fathers were assessed when the children were 3 years 10 months. Boys of mothers depressed in the first year postpartum scored approximately 1 standard deviation lower on standardised tests of intellectual attainment than boys whose mothers were well that year. The difference was reliable even when behaviour during the test was controlled for, and general behavioural problems, birth weight, parental IQ measures of the family climate and home environment, mother-child interaction, and breast-feeding during infancy were taken into account.

Interpreting the effects of mothers' postnatal depression on children's intelligence: a critique and re-analysis.

It is possible that reported links between postnatal depression and children's cognitive deficits can be completely explained by vulnerability factors in the child such as male gender and pre- and perinatal insults as well as known risk factors in the social environment. This hypothesis was evaluated, using prospective longitudinal data that had previously been obtained from a community sample of primiparous North London women, followed from early pregnancy until the children were 4 years old. Re-analysis of those data provided support for the original finding of an association between postnatal depression and impaired cognitive abilities in the children. There were, however, some important modifications: Low birth-weight infants and the infants of less educated mothers were most at risk. Perceptual and performance abilities were most affected.

Prosocial development.

The foregoing review has been organised in terms of five developmental hypotheses--let us now summarise the evidence bearing on each hypothesis. The first hypothesis, that a general prosocial impulse arises in the first year of life, is well-supported by the data. Some dispute remains about the point at which children are capable of responding sympathetically to companions in distress, with some investigators claiming that this takes place around the time of the second birthday (Kochanska, 1993), others placing this achievement earlier in development (Hoffman, 1975). The second, more controversial hypothesis, that the frequency of prosocial behaviour declines thereafter, is supported by cross-sectional data and by the burgeoning literature on the ways in which prosocial responding comes to be regulated cognitively and emotionally during the preschool years. Actual evidence for a decline and tests of hypotheses that the decline is associated with the acquisition of particular "display rules" and the regulation of empathic responding and guilt requires appropriately designed longitudinal studies. In general, our understanding of the normal course of prosocial development is limited due to the paucity of longitudinal data and the tendency of particular investigators to concentrate on single constructs--empathy, sharing, moral judgement or whatever--and not examine the interrelations of different types of prosocial behaviours in the same sample, tested under the same conditions. It is also not completely clear whether findings about empathic responding in experimental procedures (e.g. Miller et al., 1989) can be used to explain age changes in the selective display of prosocial behaviour under natural conditions. However, it is clear that future studies of prosocial development must examine the contributions of empathy, guilt and children's awareness of moral and conventional standards to children's overt prosocial actions with friends and family members. The contribution of children's close personal relationships, particularly their attachment relationships and close friendships, to prosocial behaviours, deserves increased attention. The third hypothesis was a claim that, during the childhood years, prosocial behaviour becomes differentiated in terms of gender, with females and males showing their prosocial tendencies in qualitatively different ways. Evidence bearing on this point is beset with measurement problems; it seems clear that girls report more empathy and are reputed by others to be more prosocial than boys, but direct observations do not always support such conclusions. Much more information is needed about ways in which boys in particular are prosocial--for example, co-operating with teammates whilst competing against other teams, in athletic contests.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Young children's views about conflict with peers: a comparison of the daughters and sons of depressed and well women.

Forty five-year-olds were interviewed about conflict with peers, based on a simulated dispute between two glove puppets. Recommendations about tactics to be used in resolving conflicts were affected by the child's gender and experience of being cared for by a depressed mother. In particular, the daughters of depressed women were less likely than other children to recommend aggressive solutions to peer conflict; in contrast, the sons of depressed women were more likely than others to advocate aggression. Girls in general recommended more socialized tactics than boys did.

Conflict and its resolution in small groups of one- and two-year-olds.

48 1- and 48 2-year-olds were observed in groups of 3 for 25 min on 2 consecutive days, once with ample resources and once with scarce resources. The triads were composed of either 2 girls and a boy or 2 boys and a girl, and duplicate copies of toys were available for half the groups. Their conflicts contained interpersonal features and were more affected by social influences than by the availability of resources. Contrary to expectations, scarcity of resources did not result in increased conflict. In fact, 2-year-olds were more likely to resolve conflict by sharing when toys were scarce. The provision of duplicates decreased the probability of conflict, but many conflicts occurred even when a duplicate was easily accessible. The form of conflict depended on the children's age and the gender composition of the group. Older children and groups dominated by boys, relative to younger children and groups dominated by girls, were less likely to use force and more likely to resolve disputes in prosocial ways. Taken together, these findings provide further evidence for the social nature of conflict in the first few years of life.

Preschoolers' responses to peers' distress and beliefs about bystander intervention.

The spontaneous responses of 27 3-5-yr-olds to the distress of their peers were recorded in the classroom. Individual interviews were also conducted to assess the children's understanding of social norms governing bystander intervention. Findings indicated that the children often paid attention to distressed peers, and many were capable of active intervention. Overall, however, a low rate of prosocial responding was observed. The interviews revealed that the children held systematic beliefs about how to aid a distressed companion, but did not believe they were supposed to help when competent adult caregivers were present.

Infancy.

Research on the psychology of infancy in the 1980s was prolific and diverse. At least four different perspectives have been taken. The first views the infant as information processor, adopts the methods and assumptions of experimental psychology, and focuses on such fundamental processes as attention, perception, emotion, learning and memory, search and exploration, and cognition. The second views the infant as an infant, as part of the natural world, and focuses on the important developmental milestones that uniquely characterize the period of infancy, such as walking, talking, forming relationships, and developing a sense of self. The third perspective views the infant as an eventual adult, emphasizes differences among individuals, and focuses on continuities across age and experiences such as biological risk factors, characteristics of rearing environments, and planned intervention that influence the kinds of adults infants will turn out to be. The fourth perspective focuses not on the infant per se, but on the general process of development; the issues examined concern the description and explanation of development, in terms of the existence of shifts and stages, the relationship of early attainments to later ones, the bidirectional influence of genes and environments, the timing of experience, individuals' contributions to their own experiences, and the reversibility of development. Synthesis across perspectives is difficult, but remains possible. The field of infancy research is a microcosm of psychology, but one that retains a view of the organism as holistic being. As such, the study of infancy produces insights of considerable relevance to psychology as a whole.

Interaction between Six-month-old peers.

12 pairs of previously unacquainted 6-month-old infants were observed in both the presence and absence of toys. Interactive episodes that began when an infant touched the peer or a toy held by the peer were examined. The infants' immediate reactions to these events, which provoke conflict between toddlers, were neutral or positive. Furthermore, the patterns of occurrence of these behaviors indicated social influence over time: the outcome of 1 episode influenced the initiation of the next, and, when toys were present, 1 infant's tendencies to touch the peer and the peer's toys could be predicted from his or her partner's corresponding tendencies. The conclusion from previous research that in the absence of toys infants explore other infants needs further consideration: the frequency of peer contact when toys were absent was not reliably predicted by an infant's tendency to play with toys when they were present. It appears that the increase in peer contact that occurs in the absence of toys is mediated by corresponding increases in individual infants' gestural activity, which increases the likelihood of contact; however, gestural activity does not predict the initiation of contact when toys are present and does not predict an infant's tendency to reciprocate the peer's overture in either trial.

The social nature of early conflict.

The conflicts of 24 pairs of previously unacquainted 21-month-old children were examined for social hallmarks at several levels of analysis. Each child was observed with the same partner for 15 min on 3 consecutive days. On the fourth day half the dyads were rearranged such that each child now was paired with a new partner; the remaining children returned to meet their usual partners. Conflicts were defined dyadically as 1 child's protesting, resisting, or retaliating against an act by the peer; 217 were recorded across the 4 days, 84% of which were struggles over toys. The disputes possessed a patterned interactive structure and explicit communicative content, and 75% of the object struggles were preceded or followed by socially pertinent events. The extent of conflict neither increased nor decreased over days, nor were there reliable differences between acquainted peers on the fourth day. However, the outcome of 1 conflict affected the next; a child who lost a dispute was more likely than the winner to initiate the next. Moreover, the findings suggested that dyadic as well as dispositional factors influenced conflictual behavior; the children's tendency to initiate disputes on the fourth day could be predicted from their initiations on the first 3 days for both groups, but prediction of their tendency to yield to the peer's demands for objects was only possible for the group who retained the same partners.

Responses of six-month-olds to the distress of their peers.

Observations of 12 pairs of 6-month-old infants interacting in a laboratory playroom in the presence of both mothers indicated that the estimated frequency, duration, and temporal distribution of one infant's distressed vocalizations were statistically independent of those of the peer. The absence of toys in the environment was a reliable predictor of the extent of an infant's distress, whereas the peer's estimated frequency and duration of distress and the infant's own gender and locomotor status were not. Infants watched their distressed peers during a majority of distress episodes and occasionally directed other behaviors to them but only rarely became distressed themselves. However, there were some indications in the pattern of distress in the trial when toys were absent that suggest one infant's distress had cumulative effects on the peer. Such cumulative effects would seem to be tempered by environmental conditions and the reactions of caregivers.

Multiple functions of proximity seeking in infancy.

Multiple functions of proximity seeking by infants are proposed, and the evidence for each is reviewed. Those functions discussed by investigators of mother-infant attachment--alleviation of separation-induced distress, establishment of attachments, and protection from predators--are differentiated in terms of the level of analysis employed. An alternative function, the promotion of environmental learning, is also examined. The evidence suggests that proximity seeking may hold different functions for members of different species, may serve different functions for an individual at different times, and possibly may operate on different functional levels at the same time. It does not appear to be a specialized adaptation with a primary biological function. Nor does it appear to be a reliable index of preference for or attachment to particular individuals. Rather, proximity seeking appears to provide a general means by which infants, are exposed to a variety of objects and events in the social world. Consideration of the evidence for proximity seeking supports current recommendations to move from the individual response class to alternative units of analysis of social development.

Following their companions as a form of exploration for human infants.

Infants' following of other persons, often considered a measure of attachment, qualified as a form of exploration. The results of the first experiment indicated that following can be a means of investigating novel leaders: 16 9--12-month-old infants were as likely to follow an unfamiliar woman as they were the parent and were reliably more likely to follow a moving toy. The second and third experiments assessed the extent to which the experience of following familiar persons promotes learning about the environment. Infants who followed their mothers to 1 place were more likely later to investigate a similar place than those who initially either locomoted independently (experiment 2) or were transported by their mothers (experiment 3). The findings suggested that infants' transactions with the environment need not be considered antithetical to their social behavior.