Emerging effortful control in toddlerhood: the role of infant orienting/regulation, maternal effortful control, and maternal time spent in caregiving activities.

Latent growth modeling (LGM) was used to examine the contribution of changes in infant orienting/regulation (O/R) to the emergence of toddler effortful control (EC), the contributions of maternal EC to the development of infant O/R and the emergence of toddler EC, the influence of maternal time spent in caregiving activities on toddler EC and the slope of infant O/R, and the contribution of maternal EC to subsequent maternal time spent in caregiving activities. Mothers from 158 families completed a self-report measure of EC when their infants were 4 months of age, a measure of infant O/R when their infants were 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 months of age, and a measure of toddler EC when their children reached 18 months of age. Information concerning maternal time spent in various interactive caregiving activities was collected when infants were 6 months old. Results indicated higher maternal EC predicted interindividual differences in the intercept (i.e., higher intercepts), but not slope, of infant O/R and that higher maternal EC, higher infant O/R intercept, and higher infant O/R slope contributed to higher toddler EC. Furthermore, higher maternal EC predicted greater maternal time spent in interactive caregiving activities with their infants and greater maternal time in interactive caregiving with infants also contributed to higher toddler EC after controlling for maternal EC. These findings contribute to the understanding of the influence of maternal EC, directly and through caregiving, on toddler EC. Additional implications as they are related to early developing regulatory aspects of temperament are discussed.

A latent growth examination of fear development in infancy: contributions of maternal depression and the risk for toddler anxiety.

Growth modeling was used to examine the developmental trajectory of infant temperamental fear with maternal fear and depressive symptoms as predictors of infant fearfulness and change in infant fear predicting toddler anxiety symptoms. In Study 1, a sample of 158 mothers reported their own depressive symptoms and fear when their children were 4 months of age and infant fearfulness at 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 months. Maternal symptoms of depression predicted steeper increases in infant fearfulness over time (z = 2.06, p < .05), with high initial infant fear and steeper increases in fear (intercept, z = 2.32, p < .05, and slope, z = 1.88, p < .05) predicting more severe toddler anxiety symptoms. In Study 2, an independent sample of 134 mothers completed measures of maternal depression and fear when the infants were 4 months old, and standardized laboratory observations of infant fear were made at 8, 10, and 12 months. Consistent with Study 1, maternal depression accounted for change in fearfulness (z = 2.30, p < .05), with more frequent and more severe maternal symptoms leading to greater increases in infant fear and increases in fearfulness z = 2.08, p < .05) leading to more problematic toddler anxiety. The implications and contributions of these findings are discussed in terms of methodology, fear development, and developmental psychopathology.

Maternal and contextual influences and the effect of temperament development during infancy on parenting in toddlerhood.

In the current study, latent growth modeling (LGM) was used to: (1) identify the developmental trajectories of infant negative emotions (NE) and regulatory capacity (RC) from 4 to 12 months of age, (2) examine maternal and family factors that may affect NE and RC trajectories, (3) examine transactional associations between developing NE and RC, and (4) examine the effect of infant temperament trajectories on negative parenting when toddlers reached 18 months of age. Mothers from 156 families completed a measure of infant temperament when infants were 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 months of age and completed maternal relationship stress, depression, and family demographics measures when infants were 4 months of age. Information regarding negative parenting was collected when toddlers reached 18 months of age. LGM results suggest that maternal relationship stress and depression influence infant NE development, that high NE early in infancy may compromise the development of infant regulation, and that steeper decreases of infant RC contribute the greatest amount of variance to negative parenting in toddlerhood. The implications for models of early emotion regulation and incorporating changes in temperament over time into developmentally sensitive models (e.g., emerging parenting practices and developmental psychopathology) are discussed.