More than meets the eye: The neural development of emotion face processing during infancy.

This study explored the impact of infant temperament and maternal stress on the development of the infant medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) among sixteen 6-8-month-old infants. Functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) was used to measure activation of the infant mPFC in response to angry, happy, and sad faces. Infant temperament and dimensions of maternal stress were measured with the Infant Behavior Questionnaire and the Parenting Stress Index Respectively. Infants with high negative emotionality demonstrated increased mPFC activation in association with all emotion face conditions. Negative emotionality moderated the effect of total maternal stress on mPFC activation to angry and sad faces. Mother-infant dysfunctional interaction was related to increased mPFC activation associated with happy faces, supporting the "novelty hypothesis", in which the mPFC responds more strongly to unique experiences. Therefore, this study provides additional evidence that infant temperament and the quality of the mother-infant relationship influence the development of the mPFC and how infants process emotions.

Adult Attachment, Implicit Motives, and Mothers' and Fathers' Parenting Behaviors.

The current study investigated connections between implicit motives of power and affiliation, adult attachment styles, and parenting behaviors using self-report and observational data from 191 mothers, fathers, and their 12-month-old infants. An interaction between avoidant attachment and nAffiliation indicated that implicit affiliation motives predicted positive maternal behaviors, but only for highly avoidant mothers. For fathers, lower attachment anxiety and nPower were associated with positive parenting behaviors, whereas high levels of attachment anxiety and nPower were associated with negative parenting behaviors. Attachment styles of avoidance and anxiety, as well as implicit motives of power and affiliation, were unique predictors of parenting behaviors. Overall, the findings suggest that parenting behaviors in the first year of infancy are predicted by parents' working models of attachment and implicit motives of affiliation and power.

Chapter IV: In Search of the Father-Infant Activation Relationship: A Person-Centered Approach.

The current study explored whether fathers and mothers from 195 two-parent U.S. families engaged in a form of activation parenting (i.e., sensitivity, cognitive stimulation, and moderate intrusiveness) with their secondborn, 12-month-old infants during a 15-min challenging teaching task, and to determine if this type of interaction was more common among fathers. Mean comparisons showed that fathers were lower on sensitivity, positive regard, and stimulation of development, and were more detached than mothers. Latent Profile Analyses revealed similar supportive, disengaged, and activation parenting profiles for fathers and mothers, with more fathers in the activation class. Chi-square analyses found significant associations across mothers and fathers; most infants (30%) had activation fathers and mothers, with 26% having supportive mothers and activation fathers, and 11.4% having two supportive parents. Parenting profiles were unrelated to attachment security. Results need to be replicated with children of different ages, with families from different backgrounds, and beyond the challenging teaching paradigm.

Advancing Research and Measurement on Fathering and Child Development.

Fathers are more than social accidents. Research has demonstrated that fathers matter to children's development. Despite noted progress, challenges remain on how best to conceptualize and assess fathering and father-child relationships. The current monograph is the result of an SRCD-sponsored meeting of fatherhood scholars brought together to discuss these challenges and make recommendations for best practices for incorporating fathers in studies on parenting and children's development. The first aim of this monograph was to provide a brief update on the current state of research on fathering and to lay out a developmental ecological systems perspective as a conceptual framework for understanding the different spaces fathers inhabit in their children's lives. Because there is wide variability in fathers' roles, the ecological systems perspective situates fathers, mothers, children, and other caregivers within an evolving network of interrelated social relationships in which children and their parents change over time and space (e.g., residence). The second aim was to present examples of empirical studies conducted by members of the international working group that highlighted different methods, data collection, and statistical analyses used to capture the variability in father-child relationships. The monograph ends with a commentary that elaborates on the ecological systems framework with a discussion of the broader macrosystem and social-contextual influences that impinge on fathers and their children. The collection of articles contributes to research on father-child relationships by advancing theory and presenting varied methods and analysis strategies that assist in understanding the father-child relationship and its impact on child development.

Lexical composition in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

For sixty-seven children with ASD (age 1;6 to 5;11), mean Total Vocabulary score on the Language Development Survey (LDS) was 65·3 words; twenty-two children had no reported words; and twenty-one children had 1-49 words. When matched for vocabulary size, children with ASD and children in the LDS normative sample did not differ in semantic category or word-class scores. Q correlations were large when percentage use scores for the ASD sample were compared with those for samples of typically developing children as well as children with vocabularies <50 words. The 57 words with the highest percentage use scores for the ASD children were primarily nouns, represented a variety of semantic categories, and overlapped substantially with the words having highest percentage use scores in samples of typically developing children as well as children with lexicons of <50 words. Results indicated that the children with ASD were acquiring essentially the same words as typically developing children, suggesting delayed but not deviant lexical composition.