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Parental Reflective Functioning and the Neural Correlates of Processing Infant Affective Cues
Abstract
Parental reflective functioning refers to the capacity for a parent to understand their own and their infant's mental states, and how these mental states relate to behavior. Higher levels of parental reflective functioning may be associated with greater sensitivity to infant emotional signals in fostering adaptive and responsive caregiving. We investigated this hypothesis by examining associations between parental reflective functioning and neural correlates of infant face and cry perception using event-related potentials (ERPs) in a sample of recent mothers. We found both early and late ERPs were associated with different components of reflective functioning. These findings suggest that parental reflective functioning may be associated with the neural correlates of infant cue perception and further support the value of enhancing reflective functioning as a mechanism in parenting intervention programs.
... Concerning the sensitivity to faces, emotional facial expressions also affect the perceptual and attentional processing. As compared to nulliparae, larger N170 amplitudes were observed in pregnant women when looking at angry faces compared to neutral faces (Raz, 2014) and in a sample of mothers when looking at happy compared to neutral infant faces (Rutherford et al., 2017). Likewise, complementary results indicate increased sensitivity of N170 amplitude to emotional facial expressions in non-neglectful mothers, such as significantly larger amplitudes to crying than to neutral or laughing infant faces compared to neglectful mothers who showed attenuated N170 amplitudes across all three emotional expressions (Rodrigo et al., 2011). ...
... Consistent with the generally enhanced sensitivity to faces, the processing of emotional facial expressions also appears to differ as a function of motherhood. Larger N170 amplitudes were observed in pregnant women looking at angry faces as compared to neutral faces (Raz, 2014) and in mothers looking at happy as compared to neutral infant faces (Rutherford et al., 2017). ...
... These predictions are also in line with Itier et al. (2007) who observed larger N170 amplitudes for averted gaze in static images and Latinus et al. (2015) and Puce et al. (2000) who found corresponding effects in dynamic gaze changes. Based on Rutherford et al (2017) and Raz (2014) who showed larger N170 amplitudes in mothers when looking at faces compared to nullipara, we also expected larger amplitudes for gaze aversions in mothers compared to nullipara. ...
The eye gaze and its direction are important and relevant non-verbal cues for the establishment of social interactions and the perception of others’ emotional facial expressions. Gaze direction itself, whether eyes are looking straight at the viewer (direct gaze) or whether they look away (averted gaze), affects our social attention and emotional response. This implies that both emotion and gaze have informational values, which might interact at early or later stages of neurocognitive processing. Despite the suggestion of a theoretical basis for this interaction, the shared signal hypothesis (Adams & Kleck, 2003), there is a lack of structured electrophysiological investigations into the interactions between emotion and gaze and their neural correlates, and how they vary across populations. Addressing this need, the present doctoral dissertation used event-related brain potentials (ERPs) to study responses to emotional expressions and gaze direction in a novel paradigm combining static and dynamic gaze with facial expressions. The N170 and EPN were selected as ERP components believed to reflect gaze perception and reflexive attention, respectively. Three different populations were investigated. Study 1, in a normal sample, investigated the amplitudes of the ERP components elicited by the initial presentation of faces and subsequent changes of gaze direction in half of the trials. In Study 2, based on the atypical face processing and diminished responses to eye gaze in autism, the ERPs and eye movements were examined in two samples of children varying in the severity of their autism traits. In Study 3, In a large sample, I addressed the putatively increased sensitivity in emotion processing and response to eye gaze in mothers during their postpartum period with a particular focus on infant's faces. Taken together, the results from three studies demonstrate that in social interactions, the emotional effects of faces are modulated by dynamic gaze direction.
... Associations between ERPs and self-reported parenting quality have also been investigated. Larger N170 responses to happy and neutral infant faces were associated with greater parental certainty in understanding of their infant's mental state (Rutherford et al., 2017). In another study, larger LPP responses to own infant faces were associated with more positive evaluations of the mother-child relationship (Grasso et al., 2009). ...
... In another study, larger LPP responses to own infant faces were associated with more positive evaluations of the mother-child relationship (Grasso et al., 2009). Other studies measuring ERPs to unfamiliar infant faces found no associations between LPP responses and mother-child relationship measures (Dudek et al., 2020;Rutherford et al., 2017). ...
... The included articles provided effect size data for analyses comparing parents' vs. non-parents' ERP responses to child faces (N170 k = 4, LPP k = 3), parents' ERP responses to own vs. unfamiliar child faces (N170 k = 7, LPP k = 9), and for analyses of associations between parents' ERP responses to child faces and indicators of parenting quality (N170 k = 11, LPP k = 13). Data for the analyses of ERP and parenting quality associations included articles reporting observed parental sensitivity (e.g., Bernard et al., 2015), parental secure vs. insecure attachment representation (e.g., Leyh et al., 2016), and self-reported characteristics that are associated with parenting such as reflective functioning (e.g., Rutherford et al., 2017). Following these criteria, effect sizes representing associations between ERPs and intranasal oxytocin administration to parents (Peltola et al., 2018;Waller et al., 2015) or maternal anxiety (Malak et al., 2014) were not included in this analysis as their influence on parenting quality was not considered to be sufficiently clear. ...
Event-related potentials (ERPs) are an excellent tool for investigating parental neural responses to child stimuli. Using meta-analysis, we quantified the results of available studies reporting N170 or LPP/P3 ERP responses to children’s faces, targeting three questions: 1) Do parents and non-parents differ in ERP responses to child faces? 2) Are parental ERP responses larger to own vs. unfamiliar child faces? 3) Are parental ERP responses to child faces associated with indicators of parenting quality, such as observed parental sensitivity? Across 23 studies (N = 1035), key findings showed 1) larger N170 amplitudes to child faces in parents than in non-parents (r =.19), 2) larger LPP/P3 responses to own vs. unfamiliar child faces in parents (r =.19), and 3) positive associations between parental LPP/P3 responses to child faces and parenting quality outcomes (r =.15). These results encourage further research particularly with the LPP/P3 to assess attentional-motivational processes of parenting, but also highlight the need for larger samples and more systematic assessments of associations between ERPs and parenting.
... Despite differences in methodology, a growing body of research supports the presence of an attention bias to infant versus non-infant cues in adults (e.g., Brosch et al., 2008;Chang & Thompson, 2011;Colasante, Mossad, Dudek, & Haley, 2016;Hechler, Beijers, & de Weerth, 2015;Sander et al., 2005), with a stronger bias seen in parents compared to non-parents (e.g., Barrett et al., 2012;Brosch et al., 2008;Doi & Shinohara, 2012;Kim et al., 2011;Kim, Strathearn, & Swain, 2016;Musser, Kaiser-Laurent, & Ablow, 2012;Oliveira et al., 2017;Peltola et al., 2014;Proverbio, Brignone, Matarazzo, Del Zotto, & Zani, 2006;Thompson-Booth et al., 2014a, 2014b; for a review see Kim et al., 2016;Lucion et al., 2017), and with mixed evidence that valence of infant cues differentially modulates attention bias (e.g., Dudek, Faress, Bornstein, & Haley, 2016;Oliveira et al., 2017;Pearson, Cooper, Penton-Voak, Lightman, & Evans, 2010;Seifritz et al., 2003;Thompson-Booth et al., 2014a, 2014b. Importantly, this work suggests that heightened processing of infant cues in postpartum women is linked to more sensitive parenting behaviours (Atzil, Hendler, & Feldman, 2011;Barrett et al., 2012;Bernard, Simons, & Dozier, 2015;Hipwell, Guo, Phillips, Swain, & Moses-Kolko, 2015;Kim et al., 2011;Musser et al., 2012;Noriuchi, Kikuchi, & Senoo, 2008;Rodrigo et al., 2011;Rutherford, Maupin, Landi, Potenza, & Mayes, 2017;Wan et al., 2014). Given the well-documented importance in establishing a sensitive mother-infant relationship, exploring early indicators of this developing relationship is of critical significance. ...
... Consistent with behavioural work, both MRI/fMRI (Atzil et al., 2011;Barrett et al., 2012;Hipwell et al., 2015;Kim et al., 2011;Musser et al., 2012;Wan et al., 2014) and ERP (Bernard et al., 2015;Rodrigo et al., 2011;Rutherford et al., 2017) research lends support to the notion that mothers' neural processing of infant cues might underlie individual differences in caregiving. For example, mothers who showed increased activation in regions involved in the motivation and regulation of affect (the putamen and inferior and middle frontal gyri) while viewing videos of their own 4-9 month old infant compared to another infant, engaged in more positive behaviours with their infant during an observed mother-infant interaction (e.g., less directive parent and more positive/attentive; Wan et al., 2014). ...
... Similarly, three ERP studies have all shown associations between the cortical processes associated with face-sensitive encoding (N170 ERP) and the quality of parenting behaviours. Rutherford et al. (2017) found larger N170 responses to happy and neutral infant faces in mothers with 3-6 month old infants who reported greater reflective functioning (e.g., greater certainty in understanding their infant's mental state). In another study, Bernard et al. (2015) revealed that maternal sensitivity at 4-6 months postpartum correlated with N170 responses to infant faces, such that more sensitive mothers showed heightened cortical responses to emotional infant faces (crying and laughing) than neutral infant faces, compared to less sensitive mothers. ...
While research has shown that attention bias to infant faces is linked to parenting, this work is largely cross–sectional and limited to the postpartum period. Because the transition to motherhood from pregnancy to birth constitutes a sensitive period in cortical reorganization linked to the quality of mother–infant interactions, evaluating attention processes in the maternal cortex prior to the experience of mother-infant face-to-face interactions is critical. To assess behavioural attention and neural responses to infant faces in pregnant mothers, behavioral and electrocortical indices were collected using a Go/No Go task, in which infant and adult faces served as distractors. Results showed that heightened processing of infant faces relative to adult faces (behavioral and electrocortical indices) was related to observations of greater maternal sensitivity. These findings show that prenatal maternal attention bias to and the perceived salience of infant faces serves as an individual cognitive hallmark of maternal sensitivity that acts independently of caregiving experience.
... Specifically, larger responses were found for the N/P1 (an index of early attention and visual processing of faces; Luck, Heinze, Mangun, & Hillyard, 1990), N170 (an index of face-sensitive structural encoding; Allison et al., 1994;Bentin, Allison, Puce, Perez, & McCarthy, 1996), P2 (an index of early attention to emotional stimuli; Liu et al., 2012;Sauter & Eimer, 2010), and late positive potential (LPP; an index of attentional resources, semantic categorization, and initial memory storage; Codispoti, Ferrari, & Bradley, 2007;Cuthbert, Schupp, Bradley, Birbaumer, & Lang, 2000). Similarly, research with mothers has revealed larger N/P1, N170, P2, and LPP responses to viewing infant compared to adult faces, with the strongest responses demonstrated in mothers compared to nonmothers (e.g., Bernard, Simons, & Dozier, 2015;Doi & Shinohara, 2012;Maupin et al., 2015;Peltola et al., 2014;Proverbio, Brignone, Matarazzo, Del Zotto, & Zani, 2006;Rodrigo et al., 2011;Rutherford, Maupin, Landi, Potenza, & Mayes, 2017), further supporting the notion of heightened processing of infant facial cues in parents. ...
... Importantly, both fMRI (Atzil et al., 2011;Barrett et al., 2012;Hipwell, Guo, Phillips, Swain, & Moses-Kolko, 2015;Kim et al., 2011;Musser et al., 2012;Wan et al., 2014) and EEG (Bernard et al., 2015;Rodrigo et al., 2011;Rutherford et al., 2017) research suggest that mothers' neural responses to infant-related stimuli are associated with the quality of their mother-infant relationships. For example, Barrett et al. (2012) showed that stronger activations in the amygdala (a region known for processing emotional information) to a mother's own infant's face were associated with less parental distress and more positive attachment-related feelings about her infant at early postpartum. ...
... such that more sensitive mothers showed heightened N170 responses to emotional infant faces (crying and laughing) than neutral infant faces, compared to less sensitive mothers. In another study, Rutherford et al. (2017) tested associations between aspects of reflective functioning in mothers and both N170 responses to infant faces and P300 responses (an index of continued attentional engagement and working memory; Cuthbert et al., 2000) to infant vocalizations. They found that heightened encoding of infant faces, as reflected by larger N170 responses, was associated with greater maternal self-reported certainty in understanding their infant's mental states (Rutherford et al., 2017). ...
The transition to motherhood triggers changes in human brain structure that may facilitate mother–infant bonding. While much research on maternal cortical responses to infant faces has focused on the postpartum period, no previous study has examined whether longitudinal functional changes in the maternal cortex during pregnancy and postpartum are associated with mother–infant bonding. Using electroencephalography, prenatal to postnatal changes in cortical sensitivity (P1, P2, LPP, N170 event-related potentials) to infant and adult faces were examined in relation to reported mother–infant bonding in 40 mothers (Mage= 30.5 years). Prenatal to postnatal increases in P1 and P2 responses to infant faces predicted stronger bonding. Findings suggest that cortical changes in attention allocation rather than in face–specific encoding enhance bonding.
... In our we focused on two cognitiveaffective aspects of parenting: parental sense of competence (PSOC), generally defined as parents' trust in their ability to deal with their child (Deković et al., 2010), and parental reflective functioning (PRF), commonly defined as the level of attunement towards one's child, one's parenthood and the parent-child relationship (Håkansson et al., 2019). Naturally, the majority of studies focusing on parental factors explored their protective effect on the child rather than the parent, as a means of fostering responsive and adaptive caregiving and enabling secure attachment (Pazzagli et al., 2018;Rutherford et al., 2017). However, evidence has emerged concerning their role as protective factors for the parents, predominantly by fostering parental satisfaction and well-being (Jones & Prinz, 2005;Rostad & Whitaker, 2016). ...
... A noteworthy finding in our study was that levels of PRF's 'interest and curiosity regarding the child's mental states' subscale were negatively correlated with AUD after controlling for possible confounders. Maternal interest in her child's mental states was previously associated with greater attention and tolerance to the child's distress (Rutherford et al., 2013;Rutherford et al., 2017), presumably due to the mediating effect of executive functions (Rutherford et al., 2018). Previous studies have indicated that interest in the child's mental states was also positively correlated with parent satisfaction, involvement, concern and communication with the child (Rostad & Whitaker, 2016). ...
Combat veterans are highly prone to develop Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD) following their release from duty, presumably due to high prevalence of prolonged aversive emotional symptoms such as Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms (PTSS). Parental Reflective Functions (PRF) and Parental Sense of Competence (PSOC) have been identified as key protective factors in predicting maternal functioning and well-being, yet little is known of its role among fathers, let alone combat veteran fathers. In this study we explored whether PRF and PSOC moderated the association between PTSS and AUD among 189 Israel Defense Forces (IDF) male combat veterans. Participants filled out validated measures assessing PTSS, PRF, PSOC and AUD. Results indicated that PTSS, as well as PRF’s “interest and curiosity regarding the child’s mental states” subscale, were positively correlated to AUD. In addition, PRF’s “certainty about child mental states” subscale moderated the association between PTSS and AUD, so that PTSS and AUD were significantly correlated for participants who reported average or high levels of certainty about their child’s mental states. This finding may imply that intrusive mentalizing (“hypermentalizing”) by veteran fathers may facilitate the association between PTSS and AUD, presumably by constituting a maladaptive mechanism for coping with the stressful uncertainty embedded in the parent–child relationship.
... Evidence suggests that the N170 is increased in response to crying, as compared to happy, infant faces in mothers of 12 month old infants (Doi & Shinohara, 2012;Rodrigo et al., 2011), with a similar facial expression modulation found in mothers of 2-year olds as well as non-mothers (Proverbio et al., 2006). In contrast, other studies have not found the N170 to be modulated by infant emotional expressions in pregnant women (Rutherford et al., 2017a), recent mothers within a year postpartum (Malak et al., 2015;Rutherford et al., 2017b), or in a sample of non-mothers and mothers of children up to 48 months of age (Noll et al., 2012). Critically, in two studies that examined effects of maternal anxiety on mother's N170 responses to infant emotional faces in pregnant and postpartum mothers, neither study reported an association between self-reported anxiety levels and N170 amplitude elicited by distressed and neutral infant faces (Malak et al., 2015;Rutherford et al., 2017a). ...
... Importantly, we also examined the N170 and the LPP elicited by emotional (happy and fearful) child faces when presented as Go and NoGo stimuli. The N170 was not affected by emotional valence, consistent with previous research using infant and child faces (Malak et al., 2015;Rutherford et al., 2017aRutherford et al., , 2017b, but see Bernard et al., 2015). Accordingly, ERP studies outside of the mother-child context have also not reported N170 modulation to adult faces as a function of emotional valence (Eimer & Holmes, 2002;Smith et al., 2013). ...
Maternal anxiety during pregnancy and the early postpartum period is associated with heightened neural processing of neutral infant faces as measured by event-related potentials (ERPs). However, less is known about how anxiety shapes neural face processing in mothers of older children. In our study, 36 mothers of 8-10 year old children completed a Go/NoGo task consisting of neutral and emotional (happy, fearful) facial expressions posed by unfamiliar school-aged children while EEG was recorded. Higher levels of maternal anxiety -indexed via self-report- were associated with delayed behavioral responses to children’s fearful faces and increased N170 and LPP amplitudes elicited by children’s neutral faces. While anxiety was also positively related to the LPP elicited by children’s emotional faces, it only led to increased N170 amplitude responses to children’s fearful, but not happy, faces and only when they were NoGo cues. The study replicates and extends prior findings examining the impact of maternal anxiety on neural responses to neutral infant faces to later stages of parenting with further neural markers and emotional expressions being affected. Findings evidence the importance of studying these associations beyond infancy to increase our knowledge about processes potentially underlying the relation between anxiety and less optimal parenting across development.
... Overall, studies utilizing EEG/ERP allow researchers to measure very rapidly unfolding responses to infant cues, thereby providing detailed information regarding the stages of infant-cue detection and processing (Maupin, Hayes, Mayes, & Rutherford, 2015). This information has been linked to reward processing (Jantzen et al., 2017), maternal behavior toward their own children (Endendijk, Spencer, van Baar, & Bos, 2018), and reflective functioning (Rutherford, Maupin, Landi, Potenza, & Mayes, 2017b;Rutherford et al., 2018). ...
... Not only might neuroscientific research inform mentalization-based parenting interventions for substanceusing mothers, but it also may be possible that helping substance-using mothers become more regulated through the process of mentalization could improve their ability to notice their infants' cues more quickly, differentiate among cues, and pay appropriate attention to cues at the neural level in ways that could translate to maternal behavior and enhance the mother-child bond. Interestingly, mentalization and reflective functioning have indeed been shown to correlate with mothers' neural responses to infant cues, with greater P300 and LPP responses to infant cues being associated with self-reported reflective functioning (Rutherford et al., 2017b(Rutherford et al., , 2018. Thus, it may be worthwhile to examine how mentalization-based interventions may impact substance-using mothers' neural responses to infant cues. ...
Substance use may influence mothers' responsiveness to their infants and negatively impact the parent-infant relationship. Maternal substance use may co-opt neural circuitry involved in caregiving, thus reducing the salience of infant cues and diminishing the sense of reward experienced by caring for infants. Gaps in understanding exist with regard to the mechanisms by which substance use operates to influence mothers' processing of infant cues and how this translates to caregiving. Therefore, we examined how substance use might relate to maternal neural responses to infant cues using event-related potentials (ERPs). Substance-using (n = 29) and nonsubstance-using (n = 29) mothers viewed photographs of infant faces and heard recordings of infant vocalizations while electroencephalography was recorded simultaneously. Three specific ERP components were used to examine initial processing of infant faces (N170) and cries (N100), and attentional allocation to infant faces and cries (P300). Substance-using mothers did not discriminate facial affect at early encoding stages (N170), were generally slower to orient to infant cries (N100), showed heightened responses to neutral faces (P300), and failed to adaptively differentiate between high-distress versus low-distress cries (P300). These differences may be important to caregiving behaviors associated with the formation of mother-child attachment. Implications are discussed, as are limitations and future directions.
... Rutherford and colleagues [30] reported that mothers' shifting and WM was associated with their self-reported curiosity towards their infants' mental states. Self-reported interest and curiosity towards children's mental states was also recently linked to mothers' neural processing of infant affective cues [53]. Specifically, the latter study reported an association between interest and curiosity and the P300 event-related potential component, an electrophysiological marker associated with attending to salient stimuli [53]. ...
... Self-reported interest and curiosity towards children's mental states was also recently linked to mothers' neural processing of infant affective cues [53]. Specifically, the latter study reported an association between interest and curiosity and the P300 event-related potential component, an electrophysiological marker associated with attending to salient stimuli [53]. In addition, Håkansson and colleagues [29] found that parental reflective functioning, as assessed using the Parent Development Interview, was associated with mothers' EFs in a sample of mothers with substance abuse disorder (characterized as having low maternal mentalization). ...
Maternal mentalization refers to a mother’s capacity to understand mental-states of herself and her child and to regard her child as a psychological agent. In mother-infant interactions, this capacity is commonly conceptualized as maternal mind-mindedness, which can be divided into two dimensions: appropriate and nonattuned interpretations of the infants’ mental-states. Appropriate mind-mindedness refers to interpretations that seem to be compatible with the infant’s behaviors, whereas nonattuned mind-mindedness refers to noncompatible interpretations. The aim of this study was to investigate the cognitive mechanisms that contribute to mind-mindedness. Specifically, we investigated the role of executive functions in appropriate and nonattuned mind-mindedness, and the moderating roles of two infant-related factors, prematurity (as a stressful context) and child temperament (as a context of unpredictability and negative emotionality). To this end, mother-infant free play interactions were coded for mind-mindedness in a sample of 102 mothers and their 6-month-old infants (61 preterm, 41 full-term). When children were 66-months old, mothers completed cognitive tasks that assessed working memory updating, resistance to interference, response inhibition, and shifting. Appropriate mind-mindedness was positively associated with updating, and this link was stronger when infant temperament was rated as more difficult. Furthermore, among mothers of full-term infants, mothers’ resistance to interference was negatively associated with nonattuned mind-mindedness. This link was not evident in the stressful context of premature birth. Mothers’ response inhibition and shifting were not associated with either of the mind-mindedness dimensions. Implications on understanding variability in maternal mentalization during mother-infant interactions and the roles of executive functions in parenting are discussed.
... Rutherford and colleagues [30] reported that mothers' shifting and WM was associated with their self-reported curiosity towards their infants' mental states. Self-reported interest and curiosity towards children's mental states was also recently linked to mothers' neural processing of infant affective cues [53]. Specifically, the latter study reported an association between interest and curiosity and the P300 event-related potential component, an electrophysiological marker associated with attending to salient stimuli [53]. ...
... Self-reported interest and curiosity towards children's mental states was also recently linked to mothers' neural processing of infant affective cues [53]. Specifically, the latter study reported an association between interest and curiosity and the P300 event-related potential component, an electrophysiological marker associated with attending to salient stimuli [53]. In addition, Håkansson and colleagues [29] found that parental reflective functioning, as assessed using the Parent Development Interview, was associated with mothers' EFs in a sample of mothers with substance abuse disorder (characterized as having low maternal mentalization). ...
Maternal mentalization refers to a mother’s capacity to understand mental-states of herself and her child and to regard her child as a psychological agent. In mother-infant interactions, this capacity is commonly conceptualized as maternal mind-mindedness, which can be divided into two dimensions: appropriate and nonattuned interpretations of the infants’ mental-states. Appropriate mind-mindedness refers to interpretations that seem to be compatible with the infant’s behaviors, whereas nonattuned mind-mindedness refers to noncompatible interpretations. The aim of this study was to investigate the cognitive mechanisms that contribute to mind-mindedness. Specifically, we investigated the role of executive functions in appropriate and nonattuned mind-mindedness, and the moderating roles of two infant-related factors, prematurity (as a stressful context) and child temperament (as a context of unpredictability and negative emotionality). To this end, mother-infant free play interactions were coded for mind-mindedness in a sample of 102 mothers and their 6-month-old infants (61 preterm, 41 full-term). When children were 66-months old, mothers completed cognitive tasks that assessed working memory updating, resistance to interference, response inhibition, and shifting. Appropriate mind-mindedness was positively associated with updating, and this link was stronger when infant temperament was rated as more difficult. Furthermore, among mothers of full-term infants, mothers’ resistance to interference was negatively associated with nonattuned mind-mindedness. This link was not evident in the stressful context of premature birth. Mothers’ response inhibition and shifting were not associated with either of the mind-mindedness dimensions. Implications on understanding variability in maternal mentalization during mother-infant interactions and the roles of executive functions in parenting are discussed.
... Several theories of parenting (e.g., evolutionary, social information processing; Ainsworth et al., 1978;Fuths et al., 2017;Leckman et al., 2004;Rutherford et al., 2017) highlight the importance of infant facial expressions for informing caregiving behavior. Infant distress expressions are thought to be salient given their survival function of signaling threat and illness while positive infant expressions are thought to have evolved to elicit social responding (Bowlby, 1969;Swain et al., 2004). ...
We examined associations between mothers’ (N = 137; 77.7% White/non-Hispanic) neural responding implicated in facial encoding (N170) and attention (P300) to infant emotional expressions and direct observations of their caregiving behaviors toward their 6-month-old infants. We also explored the moderating role of mother-reported and observer-rated infant temperamental distress. Few direct associations emerged that were not further moderated by temperament. Specifically, a dampened N170 to infant distress (vs. neutral) expressions was associated with mothers’ intrusiveness, and a larger P300 to infant happy (vs. neutral) expressions was associated with mothers’ sensitivity to distress. Among mothers who perceived their infants as high in temperamental distress, neural responding reflective of distinguishing (N170) and attending (P300) to infant distress (vs. neutral) expressions was associated with maternal sensitivity to distress, and neural responding reflective of encoding (N170) infant emotional (distress, happy, vs. neutral) expressions was associated with greater maternal sensitivity to nondistress. At lower levels of mother-reported temperamental distress, a heightened N170 to infant emotional (distress, happy, vs. neutral) expressions was associated with mothers’ detachment. Findings indicate that distinctive patterns of neural responding to infant emotional expressions are associated with specific caregiving behaviors and demonstrate the significance of mothers’ perceptions of infant temperamental distress in moderating the extent to which neural responding to infant expressions is associated with their caregiving behaviors.
... Using the PRFQ, Rutherford et al. [33] found expected associations between self-reported parental reflective functioning in the PRFQ and parental neural correlates of infant affective cue perception. Also, lower levels of parental reflective functioning (i.e., increased pre-mentalizing modes and increased certainty about mental states) derived from the PRFQ were found to be associated with less self-reported caregiver emotional availability [3]. ...
Parental reflective functioning is thought to provide a missing link between caregivers’ own attachment histories and their ensuing parenting behaviors. The current study sought to extend research on this association involving 115 parents, both mothers and fathers, of 5-to-6-year-old preschoolers using the German version of the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ). Our study was the first to combine Adult Attachment Interview classifications of parental attachment, behavioral observations of parental sensitivity and PRFQ ratings while drawing on a sizable father subsample. We found theoretically consistent significant relations between all measures, while our results particularly highlighted the role of dismissing attachment for decreases in parenting quality on both cognitive and behavioral levels as the dismissing status differentially affected specific components of self-reported parental reflective functioning and observed sensitivity. Interestingly, these patterns were largely comparable in mothers and fathers. Exploratory mediation analyses further suggested that decreased parental reflective functioning may partially mediate the relationship between parents’ dismissing attachment and decreased parental sensitivity. Thus, for prevention and intervention programs targeting parental sensitivity and thus children’s long term healthy mental development, the interplay between parental reflective functioning and parents’ own attachment history emerges as a key mechanism. Finally, our study served as a further validation of the PRFQ given the caveat that the pre-mentalizing subscale may need further revision in the German version.
... For the certainty about mental states medium scores might represent better PRF than very low or very high certainty scores . Further, higher levels of interest and curiosity in mental states have been associated with the neural response to infant cries, which was interpreted as increased attention to infant's distress signals (Rutherford et al., 2017). High levels of interest and curiosity in mental states and low levels of pre-mentalizing modes might, therefore, help parents to empathize with their child's feelings and thoughts and thereby enhancing sensitive and attuned caregiving, and aiding in recognizing and preventing dysfunctional behaviors in response to infant crying (Camoirano, 2017;Ensink et al., 2019;Pazzagli et al., 2022;Rutherford et al., 2015Rutherford et al., , 2013Stuhrmann et al., 2022). ...
Infant carrying may have beneficial effects on the parent‐infant relationship but only limited research has been conducted in this area. Therefore, the main aim of the current study was to investigate whether infant carrying is associated with parental reflective functioning, parental bonding, and parental (emotional) and behavioral responses to infant crying, key elements within the parent‐infant relationship, promoting infant development. Parents reporting high levels ( N = 389) of infant carrying (six times a week or daily) and parents reporting low levels ( N = 128) of infant carrying (less than once a week or not at all) who participated in an online survey about the developing parent‐infant relationship in Germany were included in the present study. Standardized questionnaires were used to assess parental reflective functioning, parental bonding impairments, and emotional responses to infant crying. Further insensitive (non‐responsive and hostile) behaviors in response to infant crying were assessed. Parents with high levels of infant carrying showed better parental reflective functioning, lower parental bonding problems, less negative emotions, and less insensitive behaviors in response to infant crying.
... We examined PRF given separate bodies of work showing associa-tions between maternal psychological factors and PRF (Katznelson, 2014) and the N170 and PRF (Rutherford et al., 2017b). Finally, as an exploratory approach, we investigated the N170 as a potential mechanism in the association between maternal psychological factors and PRF. ...
Maternal psychological factors, including anxiety, depression, and substance use, may negatively affect parenting. Previous works with mothers have often assessed each of these factors in isolation despite their frequent co‐occurrence. Psychological factors have also been associated with neural processing of facial stimuli, specifically the amplitude (i.e., size) and latency (i.e., timing) of the face‐specific N170 event‐related potential. In the current study, 106 mothers completed measures assessing maternal psychological factors—anxiety, depression, and substance use. A latent profile analysis was used to identify profiles of psychological factors and assess profile associations with the N170 elicited by infant faces and with parental reflective functioning (PRF) as a measure related to caregiving. Two profiles (termed high and low psychological risk) were identified, with the higher risk profile associated with delayed N170 latency responses to infant faces. An exploratory analysis evidenced an indirect effect between the higher psychological risk profile and lower PRF through delayed N170 latency responses to infant faces. Taken together, maternal psychological risk across multiple indicators may together shape neural processing of infant faces, which may have downstream consequences for caregiving.
... Developmental research distinguishes a person's general RF and parental RF, the latter of which referring specifically to the parent's ability as a caregiver to think about themselves and the child in the reflective manner described above. Thus, this ability supports recognizing affective cues, as shown in a study of neural processing of infant cues (Rutherford et al., 2017), which is required for sensitive parental behavior. Indeed, previous research in this field -mainly considering mothers -indicates that parental RF is positively related to parenting quality (Stuhrmann et al., 2022). ...
Sensitivity in parent-child interaction is essential for child development. Since fathers are increasingly involved in childrearing, identifying factors leading to paternal sensitivity is crucial. We examined the relation between attachment representation and reflective functioning (RF) as factors influencing paternal sensitivity in a longitudinal study including N = 40 first-time fathers (Mage = 33) and their 6-month-old children. We used the Adult Attachment Interview during pregnancy to assess paternal attachment representation and general RF, the Parental Development Interview to assess fathers' parental RF, and the Emotional Availability Scale to measure sensitivity at child's age of 6 month. Data show that secure paternal attachment representation, high general and parental RF are associated with higher levels of paternal sensitivity. Further, parental RF mediates the association between attachment representation and paternal sensitivity. These findings contribute to the identification of a causal interplay in that they suggest an explanatory effect of RF on the association between fathers' attachment representation, and sensitivity.
... These results are consistent with other research that has shown evidence of more highly educated mothers interacting with their infants in more positive, developmentally appropriate ways [85,86]. Higher education has been associated with a better ability to read infant cues [87], as well as more positive affect and less intrusive behavior [88]. Similarly, evidence indicates that older mothers are more sensitive and responsive to their infants [89] and have enhanced child-rearing skills [90]. ...
Research has shown mixed results regarding the association between women’s postpartum depression and mother–infant interactions, suggesting that a woman’s unique experience and context may moderate how depression shapes these interactions. We examined the extent to which a woman’s comorbid anxiety, her exposure to adversity, and infant characteristics moderate the relationship between depressive symptoms of women and interactions with their infants at 6 (n = 647) and 12 months (n = 346) postpartum. The methods included standardized coding of mother–infant interactions and structural regression modeling. The results at 6 months of infant age indicated that infant male sex and infant negative affectivity were risk factors for mothers’ depression being associated with less optimal interactions. At 12 months of infant age, two moderators appeared to buffer the influence of depression: a woman’s history of trauma and infant preterm birth (≤37 weeks gestation). The results reinforce the salience of infant characteristics in the relationship between maternal depression and mother–infant interactions. The findings also suggest that experiences of trauma may offer opportunities for psychological growth that foster constructive management of depression’s potential effect on mother–infant interactions. Further research is needed to clarify the underlying processes and mechanisms that explain the influence of these moderators. The ultimate goals are to reduce the risk of suboptimal interactions and reinforce healthy dyadic relations.
... In turn, a mother's emotional coaching and dismissing predicted their children's emotion regulation skills. Previous studies have found that lower levels of interest and curiosity in a child's mental states were associated with less emotional awareness of the parents' own distress and less tolerance of infant distress [72,73]. It can be inferred that mothers who were unaware of their own emotions may have decreased awareness of their child's emotions, and it may further lead to negative beliefs and coping strategies in response to their children's negative emotions [74]. ...
Parental Reflective Functioning (PRF) refers to parents' ability to understand their chil-dren's behavior in light of underlying mental states such as thoughts, desires, and intentions. This study aimed to investigate whether maternal meta-emotion philosophies (i.e., emotion coaching, emotion dismissing) mediated the relation between maternal RF and child emotion regulation (ER). Additionally, children's genders and ages were examined as moderators of the associations between maternal RF and maternal meta-emotion philosophies. The sample comprises 667 Chinese mothers of children aged 4-6 years. Mothers completed questionnaires assessing their reflective functioning, emotion coaching and dismissing, and child emotion regulation. Results indicated both a direct link between maternal RF and child emotion regulation, as well as indirect pathways mediated by emotion coaching and dismissing. A child's gender and age also moderated the relations between maternal RF and meta-emotion philosophies. Specifically, the negative association between maternal pre-mentalizing modes and emotion coaching was stronger for mothers of girls than boys; whereas the negative association between maternal certainty of mental states and emotion dismissing, as well as the positive association between maternal interest and curiosity and emotion coaching were both stronger for mothers of younger children than older children. The findings suggest that emotion coaching and dismissing mediate the relation between maternal PRF and the emotion regulation of children.
... The N170 represents the structural encoding of faces and has been associated with configural processing (Bentin, Allison, & Puce, 1996;Eimer, 2000). The N170 has also recently been linked to both positive and negative aspects of parental behavior (Bernard et al., 2015;Rodrigo et al., 2011;Rutherford et al., 2017). Huffmeijer and colleagues found that the N170 and P200 responses were attenuated by the presence of a cleft lip/palate (no effect for P100). ...
Infant faces readily capture adult attention and elicit enhanced neural processing, likely due to their importance evolutionarily in facilitating bonds with caregivers. Facial malformations have been shown to impact early infant-caregiver interactions negatively. However, it remains unclear how such facial malformations may impact early visual processing. The current study used a combination of eye tracking and electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate adults’ early visual processing of infant faces with cleft lip/palate as compared to normal infant faces, as well as the impact cleft palate has on perceived cuteness. The results demonstrate a significant decrease in early visual attention to the eye region for infants with cleft palate, while increased visual attention is registered on the mouth region. Increased neural processing of the cleft palate was evident at the N170 and LPP, suggesting differences in configural processing and affective responses to the faces. Infants with cleft palate were also rated significantly less cute than their healthy counterparts. These results suggest that infants’ faces suffering from cleft lip/palate are processed differently at early visual perception. These processing differences may contribute to several important aspects of development (e.g., joint attention) and may play a vital role in the previously observed difficulties in mother-infant interactions.
... Despite the importance of PRF, only a few studies have analyzed the neuro mechanisms underlying this process and its influence on maternal parenting behavior and infant development. These studies have identified brain areas such as dorsolateral prefrontal and temporal regions that subserve PRF faculties for mother-infant bond formation, highlighting the importance of assessing both neural and cognitive PRF [17,25]. It has also been suggested that exposure to IPV may alter both neuro and cognitive PRF [17]. ...
Background
Intimate partner violence (IPV) affects 25% of children under the age of five worldwide, yet the impact of perinatal IPV and its underlying mechanisms on infant development remains poorly understood. IPV indirectly affects infant development through the mother’s parenting behavior, but research on maternal neuro and cognitive processes, such as parental reflective functioning (PRF), is scarce, despite its potential as an unfolding mechanism. The objective of our study, Peri_IPV, is to examine the direct and indirect pathways linking perinatal IPV and infant development. We will analyze the direct impact of perinatal IPV on mothers’ neuro and cognitive parental reflective functioning (PRF) and parenting behavior during the postpartum period, the direct impact of perinatal IPV on infant development, and whether maternal PRF mediates the link between perinatal IPV and parenting behavior. We will also explore the mediation role of parenting behavior in the association between perinatal IPV and infant development and whether the impact of perinatal IPV on infant development occurs through the links between maternal PRF and parenting behavior. Finally, we will examine the moderation role of mother’s adult attachment in the impact of perinatal IPV on maternal neuro and cognitive PRF and parenting behavior during the postpartum period, as well as on infant development.
Methods
Our study will use a multi-method, prospective design to capture different levels of PRF, parenting behavior, and infant development. Three-hundred and forty pregnant women will participate in a 4-wave longitudinal study from the 3rd trimester of pregnancy to 12 months postpartum. In the 3rd trimester and 2 months postpartum, women will report on their sociodemographic and obstetric characteristics. In all assessment waves, mothers will complete self-reported measures of IPV, cognitive PRF, and adult attachment. At 2 months postpartum, women’s neuro PRF will be monitored, and at 5 months postpartum, their parenting behavior will be assessed. The infant-mother attachment will be assessed at 12 months postpartum.
Discussion
Our study’s innovative focus on maternal neuro and cognitive processes and their impact on infant development will inform evidence-based early intervention and clinical practices for vulnerable infants exposed to IPV.
... Two new areas of research might be deployed in further testing of the model we propose here, but each depends on a clearer map linking observed and selfreported behavior. For example, a new direction in social neuroscience-as we noted earlier in this chapter-is to explore brain mechanisms involved in parents' responses to stimuli related to their children-such as brief exposure to photos or cries-(e.g., Rutherford, Graber, et al., 2016;Rutherford, Maupin, et al., 2016;Rutherford et al., 2011). These techniques allow measurements of parental brain responses to stimuli related to their children without relying on their self-report. ...
The focus on the role of parenting in child development has a long‐standing history. When measures of parenting precede changes in child development, researchers typically infer a causal role of parenting practices and attitudes on child development. However, this research is usually conducted with parents raising their own biological offspring. Such research designs cannot account for the effects of genes that are common to parents and children, nor for genetically influenced traits in children that influence how they are parented and how parenting affects them. The aim of this monograph is to provide a clearer view of parenting by synthesizing findings from the Early Growth and Development Study (EGDS).
EGDS is a longitudinal study of adopted children, their birth parents, and their rearing parents studied across infancy and childhood. Families ( N = 561) were recruited in the United States through adoption agencies between 2000 and 2010. Data collection began when adoptees were 9 months old (males = 57.2%; White 54.5%, Black 13.2%, Hispanic/Latinx 13.4%, Multiracial 17.8%, other 1.1%). The median child age at adoption placement was 2 days ( M = 5.58, SD = 11.32). Adoptive parents were predominantly in their 30s, White, and coming from upper‐middle‐ or upper‐class backgrounds with high educational attainment (a mode at 4‐year college or graduate degree). Most adoptive parents were heterosexual couples, and were married at the beginning of the project. The birth parent sample was more racially and ethnically diverse, but the majority (70%) were White. At the beginning of the study, most birth mothers and fathers were in their 20s, with a mode of educational attainment at high school degree, and few of them were married. We have been following these family members over time, assessing their genetic influences, prenatal environment, rearing environment, and child development.
Controlling for effects of genes common to parents and children, we confirmed some previously reported associations between parenting, parent psychopathology, and marital adjustment in relation to child problematic and prosocial behavior. We also observed effects of childrenʼs heritable characteristics, characteristics thought to be transmitted from parent to child by genetic means, on their parents and how those effects contributed to subsequent child development. For example, we found that genetically influenced child impulsivity and social withdrawal both elicited harsh parenting, whereas a genetically influenced sunny disposition elicited parental warmth. We found numerous instances of children's genetically influenced characteristics that enhanced positive parental influences on child development or that protected them from harsh parenting. Integrating our findings, we propose a new, genetically informed process model of parenting. We posit that parents implicitly or explicitly detect genetically influenced liabilities and assets in their children. We also suggest future research into factors such as marital adjustment, that favor parents responding with appropriate protection or enhancement. Our findings illustrate a productive use of genetic information in prevention research: helping parents respond effectively to a profile of child strengths and challenges rather than using genetic information simply to identify some children unresponsive to current preventive interventions.
... Thus, higher levels of parental reflective functioning should be associated with parents' increased sensitivity to children's emotional signals. In this line, Rutherford, Maupin, Landi, Potenza and Mayes (2017) found expected associations between self-reported parental reflective functioning from the PRFQ and parental neural correlates of infant affective cue perception. Also, lower levels of parental reflective functioning (i.e., increased pre-mentalizing and increased certainty about mental states derived from the PRFQ were found to be associated with less self-reported caregiver emotional availability (Luyten et al., 2017). ...
Parental reflective functioning - i.e., parents’ mentalizing abilities in the relationship with their children - is thought to provide a missing link between caregivers' own attachment histories and their ensuing parenting behaviors. Because parental reflective functioning facilitates parents’ understanding of their children’s mental states and intentions, it is also seen as a precondition for parental sensitivity. The current study sought to extend research on parental reflective functioning, attachment and sensitivity involving 115 parents, both mothers and fathers, of 5-to-6-year-old preschoolers. Our study was the first to combine Adult Attachment Interview classifications of parental attachment and behavioral observations of parental sensitivity while drawing on a sizable father subsample. Moreover, our study served as a further validation of the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ). Our results revealed significant relations between parental reflective functioning, attachment and sensitivity, and particularly highlighted the role of dismissing attachment for alterations in parenting on both cognitive and behavioral levels, i.e., decreases in specific components of parental reflective functioning and sensitivity. Interestingly, these patterns were largely comparable in mothers and fathers and consistent for parental sensitivity coded behaviorally and parental reflective functioning derived from the PRFQ. Exploratory mediation analyses further suggested that decreased parental reflective functioning partially mediated the relationship between parents’ dismissing attachment and decreased parental sensitivity. For prevention and intervention programs targeting parental sensitivity, the interplay between parental reflective functioning and parents’ own attachment history thus emerges as a key mechanism.
... Some studies also examined differences within person, such as pregnancy vs. postpartum (Dudek et al., 2020), responses after administration of intranasal oxytocin compared to placebo (Peltola et al., 2018), or own infant versus unfamiliar infant faces (Doi & Shinohara, 2012). Finally, studies were included that examined linear associations of ERP amplitude and latency with continuous variables such as attachment security (Groh & Haydon, 2018), parental mentalizing (Rutherford, Maupin, et al., 2017b), sensitive caregiving (Kuzava et al., 2019), or depression and anxiety (Malak et al., 2015;Noll et al., 2012;Rutherford et al., 2016;Rutherford, Byrne, et al., 2017). ...
Racial disparities in maternal health are alarming and persistent. Use of electroencephalography (EEG) and event-related potentials (ERPs) to understand the maternal brain can improve our knowledge of maternal health by providing insight into mechanisms underlying maternal well-being, including implications for child development. However, systematic racial bias exists in EEG methodology—particularly for Black individuals—and in psychological and health research broadly. This paper discusses these biases in the context of EEG/ERP research on the maternal brain. First, we assess the racial/ethnic diversity of existing ERP studies of maternal neural responding to infant/child emotional expressions, using papers from a recent meta-analysis, finding that the majority of mothers represented in this research are of White/European ancestry and that the racially and ethnically diverse samples that are present are limited in terms of geography. Therefore, our current knowledge base in this area may be biased and not generalizable across racially diverse mothers. We outline factors underlying this problem, beginning with the racial bias in EEG equipment that systematically excludes individuals of African descent, and also considering factors specific to research with mothers. Finally, we highlight recent innovations to EEG hardware to better accommodate diverse hairstyles and textures, and other important steps to increase racial and ethnic representativeness in EEG/ERP research with mothers. We urge EEG/ERP researchers who study the maternal brain—including our own research group—to take action to increase racial diversity so that this research area can confidently inform understanding of maternal health and contribute to minimizing maternal health disparities.
... Since its development, several studies on PRF using the PRFQ have been published, demonstrating that the PRFQ is sensitive to differences regarding contextual factors and that the multidimensionality of PRF is manifested by variability in how the three subscales are impacted by such factors (e.g., Claydon et al., 2016;Rostad & Whitaker, 2016;Rutherford et al., 2013Rutherford et al., , 2017. Concerning the PRFQ applied to fathers, studies are still emerging. ...
The parents' capacity to reflect upon the psychological processes in their child, termed parental reflective functioning (PRF) can be impaired by parental mental health problems. The present study aimed to investigate the factor structure of an infant version of the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ-I) in a low-risk sample of 259 Danish fathers of 1-11-month-old infants to investigate measurement invariance of the PRFQ-I between fathers and mothers; and to examine the association between PRF and paternal depressive symptoms, psychological distress, and parenting stress. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a three-factor model of the PRFQ-I. Multi-group factor analysis indicated partial measurement invariance. Multiple linear regressions showed that paternal depressive symptoms were not associated with PRF. There was an interaction effect of paternal depressive symptoms and general psychological distress on paternal interest and curiosity in their infant's mental state and certainty of infant mental state. Increased parenting stress was associated with impaired PRF on all three subscales of the PRFQ-I. These results provide further evidence for a multidimensional, brief assessment of paternal reflective skills and insight into how variability in paternal psychological functioning relates to impaired PRF in the postpartum period.
... In contrast, the results reveal that parents with greater difficulties understanding their children's inner world show lower parental competence. This is consistent with the literature that describes parental reflective functioning as a key element of parental sensitivity, enabling parents to think, reflect on, and/ or try to understand their children's inner world which will make them respond more adaptively and better to their children's needs (Pazzagli et al., 2018;Rutherford et al., 2017). Regarding gender differences in the PPCV variable, unlike the study of Kritikos et al. (2021) with children between 8 and 15 years old with spina bifida, in the present study, no gender differences between parents were observed in the PPCV variable. ...
Objective
Parental perception that one’s child may be vulnerable to a threatening illness appears to be negatively associated with the child's socioemotional development. However, there are no studies that have analyzed the association of these dysfunctional parental perceptions on the emotional development of children who have not suffered a previous serious illness. The main objective of the present study was to study the relationship between parental perception of child vulnerability (PPCV) and children's socioemotional development, hypothesizing that PPCV is associated both directly and indirectly with children's socioemotional development through parental reflective functioning and parental competence.
Methods
The study involved 433 mothers and 113 fathers of infants between 0 and 3 years.
Results
PPCV was negatively associated with children's socioemotional development. Likewise, PPCV was indirectly and positively related to children's socioemotional development through the dimension of Interest and Curiosity of parental reflective functioning and parental competence.
Conclusions
The literature has shown that parental dysfunctional perceptions about the health of their children can be negatively associated with children’s socioemotional development. However, if these concerns are associated with increased interest and curiosity about the mental states of the child, this may actually promote the child's socioemotional development.
... A growing evidence base suggests that PRF is essential for parents to be able to self-regulate in response to their children's emotions and, therefore, to be sensitive and responsive to their children's needs and emotional cues, particularly in preverbal developmental phases. For instance, there is evidence that PRF is associated with maternal neural sensitivity to infant affective cues [6] and with tolerance of infant distress [7,8]. In addition, several studies have also shown that higher levels of PRF are associated with attachment security in children [1,[9][10][11][12][13]. ...
This study examines the factor structure and psychometric properties of the Portuguese Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ). The PRFQ is a brief questionnaire of parental reflective functioning that comprises three subscales: pre-mentalizing modes of mental states, certainty about mental states, and interest and curiosity in mental states. Two independent samples were included in the study: a sample composed of 710 mothers of children aged 0 to 36 months (Study 1) and a sample composed of 120 mothers of children aged 1 to 5 years (Study 2). Each sample completed a different set of self-report questionnaires. The original correlated three-factor structure was confirmed through confirmatory factor analyses. The three PRFQ subscales exhibited adequate reliability and correlated in the expected directions with several outcomes (psychopathology symptoms, emotion dysregulation, parent attachment, and parenting styles). The Portuguese PRFQ is a psychometrically robust measure of parental reflective functioning appropriate for research use in Portugal.
... The mediator represents the N170 difference score, and the outcome measure represents the maternal sensitivity difference score (i.e., post-vs. pretest) Rutherford, Maupin, Landi, Potenza, & Mayes, 2017) Kolijn et al., 2020;Huffmeijer et al., 2018), and this may have contributed to the divergent findings. ...
Background
Although there is a large body of literature highlighting the behavioral effects of parenting interventions, studies on the neurocognitive mechanisms involved in such intervention effects remain scarce.
Purpose
The aim of the current study was to test whether changes in neural face processing (as reflected in N170 amplitudes) would act as a mediator in the association between the Video-feedback Intervention to promote Positive Parenting and Sensitive Discipline (VIPP-SD) and maternal sensitivity.
Methods
A total of 66 mothers of whom a random 33% received the VIPP-SD and the others a “dummy” intervention participated in pre- and postintervention assessments. We recorded mothers' electroencephalographic (EEG) activity in response to photographs of children's neutral, happy, and angry facial expressions. Maternal sensitivity was observed while mothers interacted with their offspring in a semi-structured play situation.
Results
In contrast with our expectations, we did not find evidence for mediation of intervention effects on maternal sensitivity by the N170.
Conclusion
We discuss that parenting support programs may yield different effects on neurocognitive processes depending on the population and provide recommendations for future research. Our study underscores the importance of reporting null findings and preregistering studies in the field of neurocognitive research.
... A few studies have also examined the N100, a component that indicates early auditory processing, in response to audio recordings of infants crying. Generally, studies have shown that mothers have larger N100 amplitudes than non-mothers (see review by Maupin, Hayes, Mayes, & Rutherford, 2015), and that high-distress cries generate larger N100 amplitudes than low-distress cries (Lowell et al., 2020;Rutherford, Maupin, Landi, Potenza, & Mayes, 2017). Furthermore, consistent with research showing that parental risk status modulates enhanced N170 amplitudes to images of infants crying (see Kuzava et al., 2020), a recent study found the same pattern of results for the N100 in response to infant cries. ...
Most interventions for childhood mental health problems require significant parental involvement, and treatment programs are increasingly incorporating components aimed at enhancing parents’ own self-regulation in the context of potentially stressful parent-child interactions. This paper discusses the promise of EEG in examining the rapidly unfolding perceptual, cognitive, emotional, and regulatory processes that occur in parenting, in hopes of ultimately informing child and family interventions. First, we review two separate bodies of work that have used EEG with parents: one examining event-related potential (ERP) measures, and the other examining frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA). We discuss benefits of each within the study of parenting, and also suggest other EEG metrics (such as event-related time-frequency analyses) that can be leveraged to fill current gaps in our knowledge. Finally, we discuss the potential for these findings to inform clinical work with children and families, such as identifying biomarkers that could aid in assessment, treatment recommendations, and monitoring response to interventions.
... This is consistent with research conducted with community samples. Rutherford et al. [40] found a significant relation between visual working memory and cognitive flexibility and PRF on the PRFQ interest and curiosity in child mental states subscale and in a second study found that higher scores on the PRFQ interest and curiosity subscale were associated with neural processing of infant cues of distress (but not a neutral tone), specifically impacted on P300 event-related potential which is related to working memory [41]. Attending to EF may enhance knowledge of how parents take in and process information and cognitive processes that can be attended to or scaffolded to support the development of PRF. ...
Purpose of Review
Chronic substance use among parents has been associated with poor family outcomes. Parental reflective function (PRF), which refers to the capacity to reflect on mental states (i.e., thoughts, feelings, desires) in relation to oneself and child, may be part of the mechanism that increases risk for child socio-emotional challenges associated with parental substance use.
Recent Findings
Parents in substance use treatment have lower levels of PRF than that seen in general community samples. Within this population, lower levels of PRF are seen in those who have experienced childhood abuse and neglect or those who perform lower on tasks of executive functioning. Intervention studies with parents with problematic substance use suggest that PRF is amenable to change. Further, changes in reflective functioning about oneself in the parenting role may be particularly related to improvements in parental sensitivity.
Summary
PRF may be part of the mechanism and an important target for understanding parenting and its intervention in the context of problematic parental substance use. Further study of this area is needed, and some directions to guide this work are provided.
... Further, the majority of women were married (98.6%) and had household income ≥$70,000 (81.69%). Finally, parity or the presence of siblings for each child was not factored into the analysis, potentially affecting the maternal perception of infant cues, thereby affecting maternal sensitivity (Rutherford et al., 2017). In addition, only "maternal" caregiving quality was assessed; however, rather than seeking to reinforce gender stereotypes, we recognize that primary caregivers may be mothers, fathers, or others. ...
Attachment is a biological evolutionary system contributing to infant survival. When primary caregivers/parents are sensitive and responsive to their infants’ needs, infants develop a sense of security. Secure infant attachment has been linked to healthy brain and organ-system development. Belsky and colleagues proposed the term differential susceptibility to describe context-dependent associations between genetic variations and behavioral outcomes as a function of parenting environments. Variations in the Cannabinoid Receptor Gene 1 (CNR1) are associated with memory, mood, and reward and connote differential susceptibility to more and less optimal parental caregiving quality in predicting children’s behavioral problems.
Aim
To determine if parental caregiving quality interacts with children’s expression-based polygenic risk score (ePRS) for the CNR1 gene networks in the prefrontal cortex, striatum, and hippocampus in predicting the probability of attachment security and disorganized attachment.
Design
Prospective correlational methods examined maternal-infant pairs (n = 142) from which infants provided DNA samples at 3 months. Parental caregiving quality was assessed via the Child Adult Relationship Experiment (CARE)-index at 6 months, and attachment security via the Strange Situation Procedure at a mean age of 22 months. The CNR1 ePRSs include genes co-expressed with the CNR1 genes in the prefrontal cortex, striatum, or hippocampus, and were calculated using the effect size of the association between the individual single nucleotide polymorphisms from those genes and region-specific gene expression (GTEx). Logistic regression was employed (alpha < 0.05, two-tailed) to examine the main and interaction effects between parental caregiving quality and ePRSs in predicting attachment patterns. Interpretation of results was aided by analyses that distinguished between differential susceptibility and diathesis-stress.
Results
Significant interactions were observed between (1) maternal sensitivity and ePRS in the striatum in predicting attachment security, (2) maternal unresponsiveness with the ePRS in the hippocampus in predicting disorganization, and (3) maternal controlling with the ePRS in the hippocampus in predicting disorganization.
Conclusion
These findings offer support for genetic differential susceptibility to the quality of maternal sensitivity in the context of the ePRS in the striatum. However, the significant interactions between hippocampal ePRS and maternal unresponsiveness and controlling in predicting the probability of disorganization were more suggestive of the diathesis-stress model.
... Given the comorbidity of addiction and adversity [58,38,43], the impact of addiction and adversity on maternal neurobiology [30•, 32•, 42•], and the neurobiological underpinnings of maternal RF [59], it is no wonder that mothers struggling with addiction often struggle to mentalize. Studies have shown that mothers with addictions generally show weak RF [7] and demonstrate significantly lower RF than mothers without addictions [60]. ...
Purpose of Review
Mothers with substance use disorders are often referred for parenting support, though commonly available programs may miss the mark for families impacted by addiction. This may be related to a lack of attention to children’s emotional needs, mothers’ histories of adversity, and the neurobiological differences seen in mothers with addictions. We review the implications of addiction, adversity, and attachment for parenting interventions. We then describe Mothering from the Inside Out (MIO), an evidence-based parenting intervention designed specifically for mothers with addictions.
Recent Findings
Evidence from clinical trials suggests that MIO improves outcomes for two generations: both mothers with addictions and their children. Recent trials demonstrate that MIO may be delivered effectively by community-based clinicians and may be beneficial for parents with other chronic stressors.
Summary
Addressing addiction, adversity, and attachment simultaneously may have a positive synergistic effect. Future research should study the implementation of MIO in real-world settings and examine the impact of MIO on maternal neurobiology.
... It is important to note that some evidence for a relation between parental behavior and N170 indices of face processing has been found in several recent studies. Rutherford et al. (2017) found that N170 amplitudes to infant faces were associated with parental reflective functioning (i.e., parents" ability to understand and interpret the mental state of an infant) in new mothers. Differences between neglectful mothers (not treated with an effective intervention) and control mothers in N170 amplitudes, in response to infants" faces, have also been found (Bernard et al., 2015;Rodrigo et al. 2011). ...
Adults’ caregiving responses toward infants may have important origins in the perception and processing of infant cues as well as the motivation to attend to these cues. Moreover, some biological processes, such as dopaminergic neurotransmission, may be crucially involved. Although infant stimuli are generally experienced as cute and rewarding, infants with a visible disability may be regarded much less favorably than others, perhaps dependent on differences in perception, motivation, and neural processing. The current study investigated effects of administered dopamine on the perceived attractiveness and neurophysiological indices of attention and processing (i.e., the P1, P2, and N170 components of the event-related potential) of infant faces with and without a cleft lip. No evidence for effects of dopamine was found, but we replicated the finding that the decreased attractiveness of infants with a cleft lip was mediated by decreased configural face processing (smaller N170 amplitudes), but not more general attentional and/or executive processing (P2). The current findings show once again the unfavorable consequences of a cleft lip, but also highlight the importance of combining and relating measures across various levels of analysis and underscore the importance of replication.
... Mindfulness training and reflective parenting have been demonstrated to be beneficial for parents, so that they can regulate their emotions and still have a positive connection to their infants in stressful situations, such as being frustrated with an infant's behaviour (Fortin et al., 2016;Rutherford et al., 2017). Helping parents to recognise and control their feelings rather than trying to control their infant's behaviour, especially since this period of unexpected, intractable and inconsolable infant crying is limited, may be another means to reduce the frequency of caregivers' shaking or hurting their infants. ...
Since 2008, medical providers have offered the Take 5 Safety Plan for Crying (Take 5) to caregivers of newborns at Yale New Haven Hospital (YNHH); it focuses on five steps to manage caregiver frustration with infant crying and to prevent a caregiver from hurting an infant. We sought to determine whether Take 5 reduced the occurrence of abusive head trauma (AHT). Using a case–control design, we reviewed the Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) of infants younger than 12 months old who were admitted to YNHH with a head injury from June 2008 to June 2017, were evaluated by the Child Abuse Service and were born at YNHH. Cases had a diagnosis of AHT, and controls had a diagnosis of non‐abusive head trauma. Exposure to Take 5 was based on documentation in the EMR at newborn hospital discharge. We used Firth's penalised likelihood logistic regression to calculate unadjusted and adjusted odds ratios (AORs). Of the cases, 11.1 per cent received Take 5 vs. 47.1 per cent of controls. In the adjusted models, we found that infants whose caregivers received Take 5 were 79 per cent less likely to have suffered AHT (AOR 0.21, 95% CI 0.02–0.99). These results suggest that Take 5 has the potential to prevent AHT in infants.
‘We sought to determine whether Take 5 reduced the occurrence of abusive head trauma’
Key Practitioner Messages
• Abusive head trauma (AHT) is an extreme form of child abuse.
• Crying is often a trigger for a caregiver to shake an infant, resulting in AHT.
• Safety planning for caregiver frustration with infant crying can help reduce the likelihood of AHT.
... Addiction is a powerful variable, as ignoring this control variable (i.e., in conducting ANCOVA) eliminated many of the significant differences observed. Our observation finds support in evidence suggesting that substance-dependent mothers have a reduced sensitivity to infant cues (Rutherford, Maupin, Landi, Potenza, & Mayes, 2017), compromised mental representations of parenting experiences (Torrado, Ouakinin, & Bacelar-Nicolau, 2013), and considerable mentalizing problems (Hans, Bernstein, & Henson, 1999). Mothers addicted to opioids, such as heroin, have been found to be harsher and more authoritarian toward their children than controls (Hans et al., 1999). ...
Background:
Exposure to chronic stressors (poverty, addiction, family violence) in early life can derail children's development. Interventions focused on parental reflective function may promote parents' abilities to regulate their feelings and behaviors toward their children and buffer the impact of chronic stressors on children's development by nurturing high-quality parent-child interaction.
Purpose:
To test the effectiveness of parental reflective function-focused intervention entitled Attachment and Child Health on parent-child interaction and child development.
Methods:
We conducted two pilots with vulnerable mothers and children <36 months. Randomized controlled trial (n = 20) and quasi-experimental (n = 10) methods tested the effect of Attachment and Child Health on parent-child interaction via Parent-Child Interaction Teaching Scale (PCITS) and on child development via Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ-3) and Ages and Stages Questionnaire-Social Emotional (ASQSE). We employed analysis of covariance and t-tests to examine the outcomes.
Results:
For randomized controlled trial, we found significant improvements in PCITS parent total, combined total, and cognitive growth fostering scores, and ASQ-3 personal-social scores post-intervention. For quasi-experimental study, we found significant improvements in PCITS combined total, sensitivity to cues, response to child's distress, and responsiveness to caregiver scores.
Conclusion:
Incorporating Attachment and Child Health contributed to effective programming for vulnerable families with young children.
... One possible explanation for this finding is that mothers, due to their emotional engagement, are less objective observers of child behavior compared to teachers. Mothers with lower RF in particular might project their feelings onto the child (Ensink et al. 2017) or engage in a process known as prementalizing, which hinders their perception of child behavior and underlying mental states (Rutherford et al. 2016). However, recent research conducted by Borelli et al. (2017) pointed out that a low RF may facilitate observation of such behavior, as it is associated with a greater focus on events occurring in the external world, and therefore it may result Table 2 Intercorrelations matrix between maternal factors (reflective functioning and perception of a mother's childhood relationship with her parents) and a child's internalizing and externalizing behavior problems as reported by mother and teacher on the CBCL in more adequate reporting of externalizing behavior symptoms. ...
Objectives
Externalizing behavior problems are considered to be a serious impediment to a child’s development, and therefore it is important to identify their predictors. In this study, we investigated the connections between school-aged boys’ externalizing problems, the mother’s reflective functioning (RF) and the mother’s perception of her childhood relationship with her own caregivers.
Methods
The study sample comprised 39 school-age boys diagnosed with externalizing behavior problems together with their mothers. A child’s psychopathology was assessed using the Child Behavior Checklist and Teacher Report Form. Our assessment of the mothers’ mentalizing capacities was based on the Adult Attachment Interview and Reflective Functioning Scale. The perception of a mother’s childhood relationship with her parents was assessed using the Parental Bonding Instrument.
Results
The analysis revealed that more severe cases of aggressive and rule-breaking behavior in boys were associated with lower RF in mothers, as well as with a mother’s perception of her childhood relationship with her own parents as less autonomous. More aggressive behavior in boys was also associated with a mother’s perception of herself as experiencing a higher degree of care from her father during her own childhood.
Conclusions
These are only preliminary findings and we have discussed them with a view to understanding the possible ways in which a mother’s RF and the intergenerational context of relationship quality are associated with externalizing behavior problems in middle childhood.
... The N170 is modulated by facial expressions, with stronger (i.e. more negative) N170 amplitudes for emotional compared to neutral faces (see Hinojosa, Mercado, & Carretié, 2015 for a meta-analysis). However, findings regarding effects of emotional valence on the N170 are inconsistent (Eimer & Holmes, 2002;Malak, Crowley, Mayes, & Rutherford, 2015;Noll, Mayes, & Rutherford, 2012;Rutherford, Maupin, Landi, Potenza, & Mayes, 2017). ...
Parenting interventions have proven to be effective in enhancing positive parenting behavior and child outcomes. However, the neurocognitive mechanisms explaining the efficacy remain largely unknown. We tested effects of the Video-feedback Intervention to promote Positive Parenting and Sensitive Discipline (VIPP-SD) on mothers’ neural processing of child faces. Our primary focus was on the N170 and the secondary focus on the LPP. We expected the intervention to enhance the amplitudes of both ERP components in response to emotional compared to neutral faces. A total of 66 mothers visited the lab for two identical sessions separated by 4.28 months (SD = 0.86) during which a random 33% of the mothers received the VIPP-SD. During both pre- and post-intervention sessions, mothers’ electroencephalographic (EEG) activity in response to photographs of children’s neutral, happy and angry facial expressions were acquired. In contrast to our expectations, we found smaller (less negative) N170 amplitudes at post-test in the intervention group. There was no intervention effect on the LPP, although overall LPP amplitudes were more positive for neutral and angry compared to happy faces. Our study shows that the N170 is affected by the VIPP-SD, suggesting that the intervention promotes efficient, less effortful face processing.
Trial registration: Dutch Trial Register: NTR5312; Date registered: 3 January 2017.
... More highly educated mothers tend to spend more time interacting with their infants using developmentally appropriate activities , more complex infant-directed speech (Rowe et al., 2005), and more enriching home learning environments with more books and learning materials (Magnuson, Sexton, Davis-Kean, & Huston, 2009). These mothers, often more confident in their mothering decisions, are likely to use more developmentally supportive interactions and more successfully read infant cues (Benasich & Brooks-Gunn, 1996;Rutherford, Maupin, Landi, Potenza, & Mayes, 2017). They are more likely to scaffold infant learning (Rodriguez & Tamis-LeMonda, 2011), to use more positive affect, and to be less intrusive (Bernier et al., 2016). ...
Children from different socioeconomic backgrounds often have different long-term outcomes in terms of school, language, and emotional wellbeing. At this time, no reasons for these differences have been agreed upon by experts across disciplines. Parents with different personal characteristics and life situations use different types and amounts of interactions with their infants. The social interactions infants experience during their first year of life provide the start of their developmental path in the areas of language and executive control while also guiding their expectations for interactions with people around them.
This study used previously unpublished data from a sample of 79 young infants, age 3 to 9 months, and their mothers. There was a set of five research questions. The first question guided exploration of how socioeconomic status (SES; represented by maternal education and family income) was associated with the parenting behaviors mothers used with their infants. The second question guided exploration of how mothers’ psychosocial resources (represented by child development knowledge and parenting stress) were associated with the parenting behaviors mothers used with their infants. The third question addressed whether associations between maternal education and parenting behavior were directly connected or if the amount of child development knowledge influenced the association. The fourth question addressed whether associations between family income and parenting behavior were directly connected or if the amount of mothers’ parenting stress influenced the association. The final question addressed whether associations between mothers’ psychosocial parenting resources and infant development were directly connected or if the associations were instead connected by mothers’ psychosocial resources.
During a single home visit with each mother and her young infant, the research visitor assessed infant development, video recorded the mother and infant playing during a free play session, and asked mothers to fill out questionnaires. Project questionnaires addressed mothers’ education and family income as well as their levels of child development knowledge and parenting stress. None of the findings directly related to the five hypotheses were statistically significant. However, follow-up analyses provided information about potential future directions for investigating the links between SES, parenting interactions, and infant competencies using smaller categories of education and income levels. These findings from follow-up questions may guide potential future directions for identifying SES and psychosocial influences on early parenting interaction behaviors and young infants’ early development.
... Studies that have assessed PRF using the PRFQ have shown that a parent's capacity to mentalize may be a critical factor in tolerating an infant's distress, enhancing more positive discipline strategies, and perceiving less parenting stress (Nijssens, Bleys, Casalin, Vliegen, & Luyten, 2018;Rostad & Whitaker, 2016;Rutherford, Maupin, Landi, Potenza, & Mayes, 2016;Rutherford et al., 2018). As the parental capacity to give meaning to children's behaviour shapes the parents' affective and behavioural reactions to the child, these studies suggest that parents with higher parental mentalization experience less helplessness, are less emotionally reactive to children's behaviour and are more able to regulate children's arousal (Luyten et al., 2017). ...
Background/objective:
In recent decades, the prevalence of childhood obesity has increased, with the major implications for public health. However, the factors that contribute to obesity in children are still poorly understood. The present study aimed to investigate the role of parental reflective functioning (PRF) in childhood obesity.
Method:
In a cross-sectional design, 120 sets of parents of 60 children (n = 30 with obesity, age range 6-11) were recruited by local paediatricians. Parents completed the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire. Children's and parents' weight (assessed by BMI), as well as their socio-economic status (SES), were assessed to explore the contribution of PRF in the prediction of children's weight, controlling for parents' weight and SES.
Results:
t-test showed significant differences with medium effect sizes in BMI, SES and PRF between parents of children with and without obesity. The best model resulted from hierarchical multiple regression analyses and showed that mothers' PRF predicted children's BMI above and beyond the prediction by parents' BMI and SES.
Conclusions:
Low maternal PRF could be an important target for intervention strategies, highlighting the need to consider parental responses to children's emotions in the treatment of childhood obesity, particularly in parents with low SES and high BMI.
... For mothers, oxytocin was positively associated with safe haven, affectionate behaviors; for fathers, higher levels of oxytocin predicted more secure base, stimulatory behaviors (Gordon, Zagoory-Sharon, Leckman, & Feldman, 2010). Further, for mothers, higher OT was associated with enhanced neural responses to infant affective stimuli, which are correlated with greater capacity for RF (Rutherford, Maupin, Landi, Potenza, & Mayes, 2017). Although untested, it is possible that newparent increases in OT also sensitize fathers to infant emotional cues and facilitate responsive parenting (Atzil, Hendler, Zagoory-Sharon, Winetraub, & Feldman, 2012;Gordon et al., 2010;Rutherford, Wallace, Laurent, & Mayes, 2015). ...
This study utilized attachment theory as a framework for understanding how fathers’ reflective functioning (RF) and social emotional (SE) and autonomy (AU) supportive behaviors relate to children’s emotion regulation (ER) beyond effects of mothers’ RF. Moreover, the study explored how fathers’ RF may be a protective factor against risks associated with low income. Fathers (n = 77) and their toddlers participated. Fathers’ RF was coded from narrative accounts of parenting and mothers’ RF was assessed by questionnaire. Fathers’ SE and AU supportive behaviors were coded from observations of father-child interactions; toddlers’ ER was assessed as distress on a challenging task. Results show that, after accounting for mothers’ RF, fathers’ RF was directly associated with SE supportive behaviors; RF moderated the association between income and AU supportive behaviors. Fathers’ SE and AU supportive behaviors were associated with children’s distress. Fathers’ RF plays a central role in parenting and in children’s ER.
... Our participant's observation aligns with previous research related to brain activities of mothers in response to children's faces and voices. Previous research in mothers suggest that ERP responses have been associated with parental behavior for interpreting infants' distress cries (Rutherford et al., 2017) and mental states (Endendijk et al., 2018). In addition, when mothers were given intranasal oxytocin, a hormone involved with social and parental bonding, more robust brain activity was observed for facial expressions (Peltola et al., 2018). ...
The urge people get to squeeze or bite cute things, albeit without desire to cause harm, is known as “cute aggression.” Using electrophysiology (ERP), we measured components related to emotional salience and reward processing. Participants aged 18–40 years (n = 54) saw four sets of images: cute babies, less cute babies, cute (baby) animals, and less cute (adult) animals. On measures of cute aggression, feeling overwhelmed by positive emotions, approachability, appraisal of cuteness, and feelings of caretaking, participants rated more cute animals significantly higher than less cute animals. There were significant correlations between participants’ self-report of behaviors related to cute aggression and ratings of cute aggression in the current study.
N200: A significant effect of “cuteness” was observed for animals such that a larger N200 was elicited after more versus less cute animals. A significant correlation between N200 amplitude and the tendency to express positive emotions in a dimorphous manner (e.g., crying when happy) was observed.
RewP: For animals and babies separately, we subtracted the less cute condition from the more cute condition. A significant correlation was observed between RewP amplitude to cute animals and ratings of cute aggression toward cute animals. RewP amplitude was used in mediation models.
Mediation Models: Using PROCESS (Hayes, 2018), mediation models were run. For both animals and babies, the relationship between appraisal and cute aggression was significantly mediated by feeling overwhelmed. For cute animals, the relationship between N200 amplitude and cute aggression was significantly mediated by feeling overwhelmed. For cute animals, there was significant serial mediation for RewP amplitude through caretaking, to feeling overwhelmed, to cute aggression, and RewP amplitude through appraisal, to feeling overwhelmed, to cute aggression. Our results indicate that feelings of cute aggression relate to feeling overwhelmed and feelings of caretaking. In terms of neural mechanisms, cute aggression is related to both reward processing and emotional salience.
... A growing body of literature is confirming the importance of PRF (Fonagy, et al., 2006;Ordway, et al., 2015) such as by helping caregivers respond sensitively to their children's mental states and behaviours, allowing children to discover and understand their own internal experience via the caregiver's representation of it (Slade, 2005). PRF appears to be related to parental behaviour, in particular parental tolerance of infant distress (Rutherford, et al., 2013(Rutherford, et al., , 2016 and sensitive caregiving (Huth-Bocks, et al., 2014;Smaling, et al., 2016;Stacks, et al., 2014), with growing evidence that caregivers' capacity to mentalize improves mother-child relationships (Suchman, et al., 2004) as well as secure attachment in both children living with their birth parents (Fonagy, et al., 2007(Fonagy, et al., , 1991Sharp and Fonagy, 2008) and adopted children (Steele, et al., 2003). Looking more widely, the benefits of PRF appear to extend beyond attachment outcomes, with evidence suggesting that the caregiver's capacity to mentalize about their child may be positively related to children's social and cognitive development (Laranjo, et al., 2010;Meins, et al., 2003), and negatively related to childhood internalising and externalising problems (Ensink, et al., 2017). ...
Looked after children represent a vulnerable group in society, many of whom are exposed to maltreatment, particularly in the form of relational trauma, prior to placement with a foster family. Challenging behaviours can place foster placements at risk and looked after children often confront the possibility of placement breakdown. A carer’s capacity to retain a robust understanding of the children in their care as autonomous individuals with needs, feelings and thoughts can be important in enabling them to respond more effectively to the worrying or disruptive behaviour they may encounter. The Reflective Fostering Programme (RFP) is a new group-based programme aiming to support foster carers of children aged 4–11. This innovative development follows calls by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and other organisations to help improve outcomes for children in care by improving resources for their carers. The RFP is rooted in evidence drawn from the field of contemporary attachment and mentalizing research, which indicates that children who have a carer high in reflective functioning tend to have more favourable outcomes in terms of social-emotional well-being. It also draws on the evidence that looking after a child who has impaired capacity to mentalize as a result of early relational trauma affects the carer’s capacity to mentalize and respond sensitively to the child (Ensink, et al., 2015). This article sets out the rationale for the RFP, outlines its key elements and concludes by indicating future service implementation and a planned feasibility study examining this approach.
... This is the use of simulation as an investigative methodology, or Type 2 SBR, to help understand parent behavior in standardized way (with control of cry at different time points and variability in intensity duration). Infant simulators have already been used to study a variety of caregiver behaviors and beliefs related to parenting (Gustafson & Harris, 1990;Rutherford, Goldberg, Luyten, Bridgett, & Mayes, 2013;Rutherford, Maupin, Landi, Potenza, & Mayes, 2016; van Anders, Tolman, & Volling, 2012). Such studies create a situation or environment to allow persons to experience a representation of a real event for the purpose of practice, learning, evaluation, testing, or to gain understanding of systems or human actions and could serve as a means to explore ways to disrupt the relationship between the stimulus (infant crying) and response (parental shaking). ...
Simulation is a technique that creates a situation or environment to allow persons to experience a representation of a real event for the purpose of practice, learning, evaluation, testing, or to gain an understanding of systems or human actions. We will first provide an introduction to simulation in healthcare and describe the two types of simulation-based research (SBR) in the pediatric population. We will then provide an overview of the use of SBR to improve health outcomes for infants in health care settings and to improve parent-child interactions using the infant simulator. Finally, we will discuss previous and future research using simulation to reduce morbidity and mortality from abusive head trauma, the most common cause of traumatic death in infancy.
Theory of mind (ToM) enables children to comprehend mental states of themselves and others. In this first study investigating the mediating role of mothers' mental state talk between mothers' sociocognitive skills (i.e., mothers' ToM and parental reflective functioning) and children's ToM, 89 children (M(SD)age = 57.0 months (5.49)) and their mothers from Türkiye participated. Results revealed that mothers with higher prementalization scores used fewer affective and desire words. Mothers exhibiting greater interest and curiosity in mental states used more cognitive words, while those with more proficient ToM skills tended to use more mental state terms indicating certainty (e.g., ‘perhaps’). Furthermore, mothers' use of certainty words mediated the relationship between mothers' ToM and children's ToM. These cross-sectional findings underscore the significant role of mothers' socio-cognitive abilities in mother-child interactions regarding mental states and the development of children's ToM skills, and call for a longitudinal investigation into these relationships.
This paper reports the results from a school-based intervention for primary and elementary children evaluating the AWAKE project. The AWAKE intervention is a universal program that can be applied by teachers and is designed to improve children’s executive functions and well as their social and emotional well-being. 141 children aged from 6 to 14 from Romania and Austria were involved in the study and 50 teachers implemented the intervention. Out of the 141 children 37 of them had some learning difficulties, 25 children had a difficult social background, and 39 of them had some social and emotional problems as identified by their teachers. The intervention program lasted for 10 weeks with sessions implemented twice a week. Our results showed that children improved their working memory, inhibitory control, planning and behaviour regulation. Moreover, they showed great reduction of their emotional problems, as well as decreased behaviour problems and increased social behaviours. Future studies should investigate the potential of such activities for improving children’s academic performance, as well as the benefits of including them in the school curriculum.
Background: The quality of early experiences with caregivers affects individual adjustment and can modulate adults' responses to salient social stimuli, like infant faces. However, in the framework of Interpersonal Acceptance-Rejection Theory (IPARTheory), no research to date has examined whether early experiences of acceptance or rejection from caregivers are associated with individual differences in the electrophysiological (EEG) responses to infant faces. Objective: This study examined the associations between the perceived quality of care during childhood and the behavioral and EEG responses to infant and adult faces in non-parent young adults. Methods: N = 60 non-parent young adults (30 males; 30 females) completed an Emotion Recognition task displaying emotional and unemotional infant and adult faces during an EEG recording. Memories of past care experiences with mothers and fathers were collected using the short form version of the Parental Acceptance-Rejection scale. Results: At the behavioral level, slower Reaction Times (RTs) in recognizing all faces were related to higher levels of perceived maternal rejection in young adults; in particular, males who reported higher levels of maternal rejection displayed longer RTs in recognizing faces compared to females. At the neurophysiological level, as the level of perceived paternal rejection increased, the N170 amplitude to infant faces increased. Females who reported higher levels of paternal rejection, compared to males, had a larger increase in the N170 amplitude and a larger decrease in the LPP amplitude in response to emotional faces. Conclusions: While a higher perception of maternal rejection hindered the behavioral responses of adults in recognizing faces, those who felt more rejected by their own father during childhood showed an enhanced N170 amplitude to infant faces. This might reflect a greater need for discrimination resources, at a very early stage of infant face processing, in those adults who perceived higher levels of paternal rejection. Adults' sex modulated the associations found at the behavioral and neurophysiological levels. Overall, our findings extended the IPARTheory postulates that being neglected during childhood might trigger perceptual changes in adults, hindering the elaboration of social cues like infant and adult faces at different levels.
Objectives
Two key parental reflective capacities—mindful parenting (MP) and parental reflective functioning (PRF) — have been shown to promote healthy parent-child relationships through parents’ increased sensitivity and responsiveness to their children’s needs in spite of parenting stressors. Despite the theoretical overlap between these two constructs, researchers have continued to examine them independently. Therefore, the purpose of this scoping review was to review the overlapping and distinctive outcomes and correlates in the empirical MP and PRF literatures.
Method
A comprehensive literature search across the MP and PRF literature for studies published from 2005 through early 2020 (pre-COVID-19 pandemic) was conducted.
Results
A review of 301 articles (n = 180 MP and n = 121 PRF) revealed overlapping study outcomes and correlates, including improvement in parent and child well-being, parenting behaviors, and attachment. Both MP and PRF literatures suggest MP and PRF are amenable to intervention-induced changes, although mostly documented in White mothers, which results may not be generalizable to diverse populations.
Conclusions
Researchers should consider the impact MP and PRF have on positive family relationships. Results suggest that scholars should consider investigating and intervening on MP and PRF simultaneously. Specifically, results identified MP and PRF convergent associations and perhaps synergistic impacts on positive parenting behaviors. Limitations and future directions are discussed.
Preregistration
This review was not preregistered.
Infant faces readily capture adult attention and elicit enhanced neural processing, likely due to their importance evolutionarily in facilitating bonds with caregivers. Facial malformations have been shown to impact early infant-caregiver interactions negatively. However, it remains unclear how such facial malformations may impact early visual processing. The current study used a combination of eye tracking and electroencephalography (EEG) to investigate adults’ early visual processing of infant faces with cleft lip/palate as compared to normal infant faces, as well as the impact cleft palate has on perceived cuteness. The results demonstrated a significant decrease in early visual attention to the eye region for infants with cleft palate, while increased visual attention is registered on the mouth region. Increased neural processing of the cleft palate was evident at the N170 and LPP, suggesting differences in configural processing and affective responses to the faces. Infants with cleft palate were also rated significantly less cute than their healthy counterparts (mean difference = .73, p < .001). These results suggest that infants’ faces with cleft lip/palate are processed differently at early visual perception. These processing differences may contribute to several important aspects of development (e.g., joint attention) and may play a vital role in the previously observed difficulties in mother-infant interactions.
Maternal substance use is associated with altered neural activity and poor offspring outcomes, which may be facilitated by suboptimal caregiving in the form of impaired parental reflective functioning (PRF). To investigate these associations, the resting-state frontal electroencephalography (EEG) power of 48 substance-using mothers and 37 non-substance-using mothers were examined, specifying seven frequency bands: delta, theta, alpha, alpha1, alpha2, beta, and gamma. Substance-using mothers exhibited enhanced beta and gamma spectral power compared to non-substance-using mothers, potentially reflecting higher arousal states in substance-using mothers. There were no between-group differences in any component of PRF (i.e., levels of pre-mentalizing, certainty, and interest and curiosity). Whole-sample analyses revealed significant positive correlations between pre-mentalizing and delta spectral power. Taken together, these findings suggest potential neural correlates of maternal substance use and PRF, providing an important next step into examining associations between maternal substance use and poor child outcomes.
Neural and psychological processes in pregnancy may be important antecedents for caregiving postpartum. Employing event-related potentials, we examined neural reactivity to infant emotional faces during the third trimester of pregnancy in expectant mothers (n = 38) and expectant fathers (n = 30). Specifically, expectant parents viewed infant distress and infant neutral faces while electroencephalography was simultaneously recorded. As a psychological measure, we assessed prenatal mind-mindedness towards the unborn child and examined whether neural processing of infant cues was associated with levels of mind-mindedness. Expectant fathers evidenced greater P300 reactivity to infant distress, relative to neutral, faces than expectant mothers. Furthermore, P300 reactivity to infant distress, relative to infant neutral, faces was associated with levels of prenatal mind-mindedness in expectant fathers but not expectant mothers. These findings indicate significant sex differences in the prenatal neural processing of infant cues and relations between neural reactivity to infant distress and the emergence of parental mind-mindedness.
Numerous event-related potential (ERP) studies have examined adults' neural responses to child emotional expressions to understand the neurobiological mechanisms contributing to caregiving. It is unclear, however, whether one emotion evokes an enhanced response across components, and whether this pattern differs based on parent status or other sample characteristics. This meta-analysis quantified adult responses to child emotional expressions at the N170 and the late positive potential (LPP) components. Cohen's d reflected the difference between crying and neutral (CN), crying and laughing (CL), and laughing and neutral (LN) N170 and LPP amplitudes. Crying expressions elicited slightly enhanced N170 and LPP amplitudes relative to neutral and laughing expressions (N170 CN: k = 24, d = -0.09, p < 0.001; N170 CL: k = 30, d = -0.07, p = .004; LPP CN: k = 20, d = 0.12, p = .027; LPP CL: k = 27, d = 0.10, p < .001), and laughing expressions elicited slightly enhanced N170 amplitudes relative to neutral expressions (N170 LN: k = 21, d = -0.05, p = .02). Parental status, child age, risk factors for insensitive caregiving, and measurement characteristics moderated some effect sizes, with reference electrode emerging as the most consistent moderator. Results shed light on the typical pattern of neural response to child emotions and characteristics that may moderate this response. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
Background:
Public health and pediatric nurses typically focus on supporting parenting to reduce the likelihood of children's behavioral problems. Studies have identified interactions between early exposures to stress in caregiving and child genotype in predicting children's behavioral problems, such that certain genotypes connote greater differential susceptibility or plasticity to environmental stressors. We sought to uncover the interaction between observational measures of parent-child relationship quality and genotype in predicting early-onset behavioral problems in 24-month-olds, using prospective methods.
Methods:
We conducted a secondary analysis of data collected on a subsample of 176 women and their infants enrolled during pregnancy in the ongoing Alberta Pregnancy Outcomes and Nutrition (APrON) cohort study. Inclusion criteria required mothers to be ≥18 years of age, English speaking and ≤22 weeks gestational age at enrollment. Genetic data were obtained from blood leukocytes and buccal epithelial cell samples, collected from infants at three months of age. For each child, the presence of plasticity alleles was determined for BDNF, CNR1, DRD2/ANKK1, DRD4, DAT1, 5-HTTLPR, and MAOA and an overall index was calculated to summarize the number of plasticity alleles present. Observational assessments of parent-child relationship quality (sensitivity, controlling, and unresponsiveness) were conducted at six months of age. Children's internalizing (e.g., emotionally reactive, anxious/depressed, somatic complaint, withdrawn) and externalizing (e.g., aggression, inattention) behaviors were assessed at 24 months of age. After extracting genetic data, a maximum likelihood method for regressions was employed with Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) for model selection.
Results:
When parents were less responsive and children possessed more plasticity alleles, children were more likely to be emotionally reactive, anxious/depressed, report somatic complaints, and withdrawn, while when parents were less responsive and children possessed fewer plasticity alleles, children were less likely to display these internalizing behaviors, in a differentially susceptible manner. Furthermore, when parents were more responsive, and children possessed more plasticity alleles, children were less likely to display internalizing behaviors (P = 0.034). Similarly, children who possessed either the CNR1-A plasticity allele (P = 0.010) or DAT1 9-repeat plasticity allele (P = 0.036) and experienced more/less parental control displayed more/fewer externalizing problems, respectively, in a differentially susceptible manner.
Conclusions:
The plasticity index score interacted with parental unresponsiveness in predicting anxiety and depressive behavioral problems in children, while individual genetic variants interacted with parental controlling behavior in predicting aggression and inattention in children, suggestive of differential susceptibility to caregiving. Especially in the context of nursing interventions designed to support childrearing and children's development, nurses need to be aware of the interactions between child genotype and parenting in understanding how well interventions will work in promoting optimal child behavior.
Parent–infant interaction is known to be influenced bidirectionally by parent and infant characteristics. However, it is unclear whether infant temperament affects parents’ neural responses to infant stimuli. 85 infants (6–12 months) were filmed in distress‐eliciting tasks, which were coded for infants’ negative affect. Mothers’ reported infant affect was obtained from the Infant Behavior Questionnaire Very Short Form‐Revised. Mothers’ EEG activity was recorded while passively viewing photos of own, familiarized, and unfamiliar infants. Multiple regression indicated that mothers who reported greater infant negative affect showed a smaller difference in the late positive potential (LPP) response to own infant versus familiarized infant, controlling for researcher‐coded infant negative affect. The findings suggest that parents’ perceptions of their infant's temperament, but not independent measures of infant temperament, are related to electrocortical indices of emotional attention.
This paper reports on three studies on the development and validation of the Parental Reflective Functioning Questionnaire (PRFQ), a brief, multidimensional self-report measure that assesses parental reflective functioning or mentalizing, that is, the capacity to treat the infant as a psychological agent. Study 1 investigated the factor structure, reliability, and relationships of the PRFQ with demographic features, symptomatic distress, attachment dimensions, and emotional availability in a socially diverse sample of 299 mothers of a child aged 0–3. In Study 2, the factorial invariance of the PRFQ in mothers and fathers was investigated in a sample of 153 first-time parents, and relationships with demographic features, symptomatic distress, attachment dimensions, and parenting stress were investigated. Study 3 investigated the relationship between the PRFQ and infant attachment classification as assessed with the Strange Situation Procedure (SSP) in a sample of 136 community mothers and their infants. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses suggested three theoretically consistent factors assessing pre-mentalizing modes, certainty about the mental states of the infant, and interest and curiosity in the mental states of the infant. These factors were generally related in theoretically expected ways to parental attachment dimensions, emotional availability, parenting stress, and infant attachment status in the SSP. Yet, at the same time, more research on the PRFQ is needed to further establish its reliability and validity.
Presents a summary of research findings that suggests that the qualitative nature of 1-yr-olds' attachment to their mothers is related both to earlier mother–infant interaction and to various aspects of their later development. The way in which they organize their behavior toward their mothers affects the way in which they organize their behavior toward other aspects of their environment, both animate and inanimate. This organization provides a core of continuity in development despite changes that come with cognitive and socioemotional developmental acquisitions. Despite the need for further research into children's attachment to their parents and to other figures, findings to date provide relevant leads for policies, education in parenting, and intervention procedures to further the welfare of infants and young children. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This study examined the biological processes associated with foster mother-infant bonding. In an examination of foster mother-infant dyads (N = 41, mean infant age = 8.5 months), foster mothers' oxytocin production was associated with their expressions of behavioral delight toward their foster infant and their average P3 response to images of all infant faces in the first 2 months of the relationship. Three months later, foster mothers' oxytocin production was still associated with delight toward their foster infant and was also specifically associated with their P3 response to an image of their foster infant. Similar to biologically related mothers and infants, oxytocin appears to be associated with foster mothers' brain activity and caregiving behavior, with patterns suggestive of bond formation.
This paper reviews the literature on the Nl wave of the human auditory evoked potential. It concludes that at least six different cerebral processes can contribute to (he negative wave recorded from the scalp with a peak latency between 50 and 150 ms: a component generated in the auditory-cortex on the supratemporal plane, a component generated in the association cortex on the lateral aspect of the temporal and parietal cortex, a component generated in the motor and premotor cortices, the mismatch negativity, a temporal component of the processing negativity, and a frontal component of the processing negativity, The first three, which can be considered ‘true’ N1 components, are controlled by the physical and temporal aspects of the stimulus and by the general state of the subject. The other three components are not necessarily elicited by a stimulus but depend on the conditions in which the stimulus occurs. They often last much longer than the true N1 components that they overlap.
Infant faces are highly salient social stimuli that appear to elicit intuitive parenting behaviors in healthy adult women. Behavioral and observational studies indicate that this effect may be modulated by experiences of reproduction, caregiving, and psychiatric symptomatology that affect normative attention and reward processing of infant cues. However, relatively little is known about the neural correlates of these effects. Using the event-related potential (ERP) technique, this study investigated the impact of parental status (mother, non-mother) and depression symptoms on early visual processing of infant faces in a community sample of adult women. Specifically, the P1 and N170 ERP components elicited in response to infant face stimuli were examined. While characteristics of the N170 were not modulated by parental status, a statistically significant positive correlation was observed between depression symptom severity and N170 amplitude. This relationship was not observed for the P1. These results suggest that depression symptoms may modulate early neurophysiological responsiveness to infant cues, even at sub-clinical levels.
Substance abuse in pregnant and recently post-partum women is a major public health concern because of effects on the infant and on the ability of the adult to care for the infant. In addition to the negative health effects of teratogenic substances on fetal development, substance use can contribute to difficulties associated with the social and behavioral aspects of parenting. Neural circuits associated with parenting behavior overlap with circuits involved in addiction (e.g., frontal, striatal, and limbic systems) and thus may be co-opted for the craving/reward cycle associated with substance use and abuse and be less available for parenting. The current study investigates the degree to which neural circuits associated with parenting are disrupted in mothers who are substance-using. Specifically, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the neural response to emotional infant cues (faces and cries) in substance-using compared to non-using mothers. In response to both faces (of varying emotional valence) and cries (of varying distress levels), substance-using mothers evidenced reduced neural activation in regions that have been previously implicated in reward and motivation as well as regions involved in cognitive control. Specifically, in response to faces, substance users showed reduced activation in prefrontal regions, including the dorsolateral and ventromedial prefrontal cortices, as well as visual processing (occipital lobes) and limbic regions (parahippocampus and amygdala). Similarly, in response to infant cries, substance-using mothers showed reduced activation relative to non-using mothers in prefrontal regions, auditory sensory processing regions, insula and limbic regions (parahippocampus and amygdala). These findings suggest that infant stimuli may be less salient for substance-using mothers, and such reduced saliency may impair developing infant-caregiver attachment and the ability of mothers to respond appropriately to their infants.
This investigation examined the neural and personality correlates of processing infant facial expressions in mothers with substantiated neglect of a child under 5 years old. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 14 neglectful and 14 control mothers as they viewed and categorized pictures of infant cries, laughs, and neutral faces. Maternal self-reports of anhedonia and empathy were also completed. Early (negative occipitotemporal component peaking at around 170 ms on the scalp [N170] and positive electrical potential peaking at about 200 ms [P200]) and late positive potential (LPP) components were selected. Both groups of mothers showed behavioral discrimination between the different facial expressions via reaction time and accuracy measures. Neglectful mothers did not exhibit increased N170 amplitude at temporal leads in response to viewing crying versus laughing and neutral expressions compared to control mothers. Both groups had greater P200 and LPP amplitudes at centroparietal leads in response to viewing crying versus neutral facial expressions. However, neglectful mothers displayed an overall attenuated brain response in LPP that was related to their higher scores in social anhedonia but not to their empathy scores. The ERP data suggest that the brain's failures in the early differentiation of cry stimuli and in the sustained processing of infant expressions related to social anhedonia may underlie the insensitive responding in neglectful mothers. The implications of these results for the design and evaluation of preventive interventions are discussed.
In this study, we examined maternal reflective functioning as a bi-dimensional construct in a sample of 47 mothers with drug use disorders caring for infants and toddlers. We first tested a two-factor solution with scale items from the Parent Development Interview and confirmed the presence of two related but distinct dimensions: self-mentalization and child-mentalization. We then tested predictions that (a) self-mentalization would be associated with overall quality of maternal caregiving and that (b) child-mentalization would be associated with (i) maternal contingent behavior and (ii) child communication. Results partially supported hypotheses (a) and (bii). Unexpectedly, self-mentalization alone was associated with maternal contingent behavior. Findings suggest that self-mentalization may be a critical first step in improving mother-child relations involving mothers with drug use disorders. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
Event-related potentials (ERPs) associated with face perception were recorded with scalp electrodes from normal volunteers. Subjects performed a visual target detection task in which they mentally counted the number of occurrences of pictorial stimuli from a designated category such us butterflies. In separate experiments, target stimuli were embedded within a series of other stimuli including unfamiliar human faces and isolated face components, inverted faces, distorted faces, animal faces, and other nonface stimuli. Unman faces evoked a negative potential at 172 msec (N170), which was absent from the ERPs elicited by other animate and inanimate nonface stimuli. N170 was largest over the posterior temporal scalp and was larger over the right than the left hemisphere. N170 was delayed when faces were presented upside-down, but its amplitude did not change. When presented in isolation, eyes elicited an N170 that was significantly larger than that elicited by whole faces, while noses and lips elicited small negative ERPs about 50 msec later than N170. Distorted human faces, in which the locations of inner face components were altered, elicited an N170 similar in amplitude to that elicited by normal faces. However, faces of animals, human hands, cars, and items of furniture did not evoke N170. N170 may reflect the operation of a neural mechanism tuned to detect (as opposed to identify) human faces, similar to the "structural encoder" suggested by Bruce and Young (1986). A similar function has been proposed for the face-selective N200 ERP recorded from the middle fusiform and posterior inferior temporal gyri using subdural electrodes in humans (Allison, McCarthy, Nobre, Puce, & Belger, 1994c). However, the differential sensitivity of N170 to eyes in isolation suggests that N170 may reflect the activation of an eye-sensitive region of cortex. The voltage distribution of N170 over the scalp is consistent with a neural generator located in the occipitotemporal sulcus lateral to the fusiform/inferior temporal region that generates N200.
The authors examined pilot data from an attachment-based parenting intervention for substance-abusing mothers of toddlers (ages 12–36 months). The Mothers and Toddlers Program (MTP) is a 20-week individual therapy intervention that aims to help mothers develop more balanced representations of their children and improve their capacity for reflective functioning (i.e., recognition of the intentional nature of children's behavior). The authors hypothesized that improvement in maternal representational balance and maternal capacity for reflective functioning would correspond with improvements in maternal behavior with toddlers (e.g., sensitivity to cues, responsiveness to distress, and social–emotional growth fostering) and reduction in maternal psychiatric distress and substance abuse. Eight mothers who completed MTP showed moderate improvements in representational balance and reflective functioning, and these changes corresponded with significant improvements in maternal behaviors with toddlers. The authors also compared MTP completers and noncompleters on sociodemographic and psychosocial indexes and examined the validity of the intervention's proposed mechanisms of change. Preliminary findings support the importance of attachment mechanisms and indicate that attachment-based interventions may strengthen substance-abusing mothers' capacities to foster their toddlers' socioemotional development.
This study employed visually evoked event-related potential (ERP) methodology to examine temporal patterns of structural and higher-level face processing in birth and foster/adoptive mothers viewing pictures of their children. Fourteen birth mothers and 14 foster/adoptive mothers engaged in a computerized task in which they viewed facial pictures of their own children, and of familiar and unfamiliar children and adults. All mothers, regardless of type, showed ERP patterns suggestive of increased attention allocation to their own children's faces compared to other child and adult faces beginning as early as 100-150 ms after stimulus onset and lasting for several hundred milliseconds. These data are in line with a parallel processing model that posits the involvement of several brain regions in simultaneously encoding the structural features of faces as well as their emotional and personal significance. Additionally, late positive ERP patterns associated with greater allocation of attention predicted mothers' perceptions of the parent-child relationship as positive and influential to their children's psychological development. These findings suggest the potential utility of using ERP components to index maternal processes.
The present study evaluated the impact of stimulus type and early motherhood on attentional processing. Auditory ERPs were recorded with a modified novelty oddball paradigm both in mothers who had recently given birth and in control women who were not in the state of early motherhood. Conventional tone pips were used as standards and deviants, and an infant cry served as an experimental stimulus of novelty value. Differences were revealed in the N100 amplitudes between the study groups with higher amplitudes in the mothers. A few days after childbirth the mothers seemed to be in a stage with an increased level of alertness and different types of surrounding stimuli may elicit a stronger arousal response than normally, not just those directly related to the new baby. The gating and the mechanisms of further processing of stimulus information were not different in mothers from controls and seemed to guarantee normal control of stimulus-elicited cognitive load in early motherhood.
We compared auditory N100 responses in female adults to two non-attended human sound stimuli. An infant's cry represented an unfamiliar, emotionally colored sound and the Finnish word "hei" (meaning "hi") a familiar and emotionally neutral sound. Both sounds elicited clear N100 responses over auditory areas in both hemispheres. However, the dynamic behavior of the N100 response following the first few repetitions of the sounds was significantly different. We observed faster habituation and longer response latencies, particularly over the ipsilateral hemisphere, during the first and second repetitions of the cry stimulus. This pattern may reflect an altered arousal level and slower, bilateral processing during the unfamiliar emotionally loaded cry as compared to the emotionally neutral word "hei" .
Auditory event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were recorded in response to an emotional (a baby's cry) and a neutral (a word) stimulus in a group of mothers 2-5 days after childbirth (n = 20) and in control women (n = 18) who were not in the state of early motherhood. For each mother, her own infant's cry was recorded and used as the cry stimulus, whereas a strange baby's cry was used for control women. The word stimulus was identical for both groups. Stimuli were presented in intermittent trains in order to study the arousal responses to the first stimuli of the trains, and refractoriness of ERPs during stimulus repetition. The N100 responses were significantly larger in amplitude in mothers than in control women, not only to the emotional cry stimuli but also to the neutral word stimuli. The finding suggests a general increase in alertness and arousal in mothers, which may be necessary in enabling the mother to be continuously alert to her infant's needs. This allows good care of the infant and may be essential in building an emotional tie between the mother and her child.
Six experiments showed that being excluded or rejected caused decrements in self-regulation. In Experiment 1, participants who were led to anticipate a lonely future life were less able to make themselves consume a healthy but bad-tasting beverage. In Experiment 2, some participants were told that no one else in their group wanted to work with them, and these participants later ate more cookies than other participants. In Experiment 3, excluded participants quit sooner on a frustrating task. In Experiments 4-6, exclusion led to impairment of attention regulation as measured with a dichotic listening task. Experiments 5 and 6 further showed that decrements in self-regulation can be eliminated by offering a cash incentive or increasing self-awareness. Thus, rejected people are capable of self-regulation but are normally disinclined to make the effort.
Darwin originally pointed out that there is something about infants which prompts adults to respond to and care for them, in order to increase individual fitness, i.e. reproductive success, via increased survivorship of one's own offspring. Lorenz proposed that it is the specific structure of the infant face that serves to elicit these parental responses, but the biological basis for this remains elusive. Here, we investigated whether adults show specific brain responses to unfamiliar infant faces compared to adult faces, where the infant and adult faces had been carefully matched across the two groups for emotional valence and arousal, as well as size and luminosity. The faces also matched closely in terms of attractiveness. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG) in adults, we found that highly specific brain activity occurred within a seventh of a second in response to unfamiliar infant faces but not to adult faces. This activity occurred in the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC), an area implicated in reward behaviour, suggesting for the first time a neural basis for this vital evolutionary process. We found a peak in activity first in mOFC and then in the right fusiform face area (FFA). In mOFC the first significant peak (p<0.001) in differences in power between infant and adult faces was found at around 130 ms in the 10-15 Hz band. These early differences were not found in the FFA. In contrast, differences in power were found later, at around 165 ms, in a different band (20-25 Hz) in the right FFA, suggesting a feedback effect from mOFC. These findings provide evidence in humans of a potential brain basis for the "innate releasing mechanisms" described by Lorenz for affection and nurturing of young infants. This has potentially important clinical applications in relation to postnatal depression, and could provide opportunities for early identification of families at risk.
The term reflective function (RF) refers to the psychological processes underlying the capacity to mentalize, a concept which has been described in both the psychoanalytic (Fonagy, 1989; 1991) and cognitive psychology literatures (e.g. Morton & Frith, 1995). Reflective functioning or mentalization is the active expression of this psychological capacity intimately related to the representation of the self (Fonagy & Target, 1995; 996; Target & Fonagy, 1996). RF involves both a self-reflective and an interpersonal component that ideally provides the individual with a well-developed capacity to distinguish inner from outer reality, pretend from ‘real’ modes of functioning, intra-personal mental and emotional processes from interpersonal communications. Because of the inherently interpersonal origins to how the reflective capacity develops and expresses itself, this manual refers to reflective functioning, and no longer of reflective-self functioning (see Fonagy, Steele, Moran, Steele, & Higgitt, 1991a), as the latter term is too easily reduced to self-reflection which is only part of what is intended by the concept.
This chapter reviews the contribution of electromagnetic measures, mostly event-related potentials (ERPs), to our understanding of the time course of face processing in the normal adult brain, with a focus on the 100-200 ms time window after stimulus onset, that is, during the occipitotemporal component termed the N170. It first describes the N170 component, how it can be defined, and its relationship to the vertex positive potential (VPP) response to faces that was reported prior to the N170 in the literature. It then addresses the question of the origin of the largest N170 to faces in terms of electroencephalographic (EEG) signal, neural sources, and functional processes that lead to this effect. It also discusses the controversial issue of whether the N170 reflects underlying processes that can be at least partly recruited for processing nonface objects following extensive visual experience with these objects. The chapter summarizes the evidence showing that the N170 reflects both the initial basic-level categorization of the stimulus as a face through the activation of neural face representations and the coding of individual face representations. It then briefly discusses why the N170 may be a critical time window for other types of face categorizations before summarizing the chapter and addressing the question of how the N170 can be taken as a tool to clarify the dynamics and the nature of early face processes in future research.
Primary maternal preoccupation represents a psychological state in women, marked by heightened sensitivity to one's infant during pregnancy and the postpartum period. Recent neuroimaging research has supported the proposition that there are neural changes that accompany motherhood, differentiating mothers from non-mothers when presented with infant cues. Here we review this literature within the framework of preoccupation and consider the opportunity this approach provides for integrating psychoanalytic theory with neurobiology within a signal detection framework.
SYNOPSIS
Parents play a significant role in their child’s development. Recent neuroimaging research has begun to evaluate the neural circuitry of human parenting to better understand parental responsiveness to infant affective cues. Here, the authors introduce the value of using electroencephalography and event-related potentials as a methodology to probe the neural correlates of parenting. Given the precise temporal resolution of this technique, it affords the opportunity to explore, with millisecond accuracy, the temporal dynamics of stimulus processing. The emerging research was reviewed that has utilized electroencephalography/event-related potentials to explore typical normative processes and mechanisms in parental responsiveness, and consider how these processes might be compromised by psychopathology. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed as the unique contribution this approach can make to the field of parenting research is highlighted.
Women may be especially vulnerable to anxiety during the postpartum period and early infancy. However, little is known regarding the potential impact of maternal anxiety on the neural processing of infant-relevant information.Methods
In this ERP study, 47 recent mothers viewed neutral and distressed infant faces, concurrent with EEG collection. We examined the N170 as a perceptual marker of face processing and the late positive potential (LPP) as an index of engagement with stimulus processing. Mothers also completed the Spielberger State–Trait Anxiety Inventory.ResultsWhile the N170 was unaffected by infant affect and anxiety levels, the LPP was greater in amplitude for distressed vs. neutral faces. Moreover, the degree of LPP amplitude elicited by neutral infant faces was positively correlated with state anxiety. There were no associations between anxiety and the LPP elicited by distressed infant faces.LimitationsWe employed self-report measures of state and trait anxiety symptomatology and including diagnostic classification of anxiety disorders will be important in future research.Conclusions
These results indicate that recent mothers with higher levels of state anxiety may be more engaged with processing neutral infant cues.
In this paper we focus on the first wave of outcomes in a pilot phase randomized control trial of a home-based intervention for infants and their families, Minding the Baby® (MTB), an interdisciplinary, mentalization-based intervention in which home visiting services are provided by a team that includes a nurse practitioner and a clinical social worker. Families are recruited during mother's pregnancy and continue through the child's second birthday. Analyses revealed that intervention families were more likely to be on track with immunization schedules at 12 months, had lower rates of rapid subsequent childbearing, and were less likely to be referred to child protective services. In addition, mother-infant interactions were less likely to be disrupted at 4 months when mothers were teenagers, and all intervention infants were more likely to be securely attached, and less likely to be disorganized in relation to attachment at one year. Finally, mothers' capacity to reflect on their own and their child's experience improved over the course of the intervention in the most high-risk mothers.
Recent research has indicated that parental reflective functioning or mentalization plays a crucial role in the development of a range of healthy adaptations in both parent and child. While many parenting interventions developed over the course of the last 20 years have implicitly attempted to enhance mentalization in parents, this article describes an effort to directly intervene with parents to enhance or encourage the development of reflective capacities. In this article, the broad outlines of a reflective parenting approach are described. Two reflective parenting programs are then considered, one a group intervention designed for low-risk parents, the other a home visiting intervention designed for high-risk parents and children.
An attachment bond between a mother and her child is one of the most intimate human relationships. It is important for a mother to be sensitive to her child's gaze direction because exchanging gaze information plays a vital role in their relationship. Furthermore, recent studies have revealed differential neural activation patterns in mothers when presented the faces of their own children or the unfamiliar child of other people. Based on these findings, in the present study, we investigated whether mothers show differential neural responses to gaze information of their own child compared to that of an unfamiliar child. To this end, event-related-potentials elicited by the faces of one's own or an unfamiliar child with straight or averted gaze directions were measured using an oddball-paradigm. The results showed that peak amplitudes of the N170 component were enlarged by viewing the straight gazes compared to the averted gazes of one's own child, but not of an unfamiliar child. When the gaze was directed straight, the P3 amplitude elicited by one's own child's face is smaller than that elicited by an unfamiliar child's face. P3s elicited in viewing one's own child's face with averted gaze and in viewing an unfamiliar child's face with straight gaze were positively correlated with state-anxiety. These results bolster the hypothesis that processing the gaze information of one's own child elicits differential neural activation compared to the gaze information of an other person's unfamiliar child at both perceptual and evaluative stages of face processing.
Relations between maternal education and indices of infant information-processing performance were examined. A sample of 93 3-month olds whose mothers' completed education level was adequately distributed were seen in an infant control habituation procedure. Eighteen infants failed to complete the procedure, and 76 reached a conventional habituation criterion. No significant differences in habituation performance by maternal education level emerged. This finding suggests that information-processing indices obtained in the first 6 months are useful as predictive measures of mental development that are uncorrelated with important markers of infants' environmental rearing conditions.
In der Forschung über → Eltern-Kind-Interaktionen eine Bezeichnung für die auf Adaptation beruhenden Formen der Betreuung
und für erzieherische Interventionen, die Eltern oder andere Bezugspersonen ohne rationale Überlegung und bewuβte Absicht
insbesondere gegenüber Säuglingen des vorsprachlichen Alters ausüben. Ihre Entdekkung und Beschreibung (Ende der 70er Jahre)
stammt von H. & M. Papoušek. Mit beträchtlicher Universalität in bezug auf Alter (von ca. 3 Jahren an), Geschlecht und kulturelle
Abstammung haben die Betreuer des Säuglings die Fähigkeit, die Entwicklung seiner wichtigsten, spezifisch menschlichen Eigenschaften
und Fertigkeiten zu fördern (Umgang mit frei gewählten Symbolen, Verständigung mittels Sprache oder Gebärden, kulturelle Integration,
innere Repräsentation und bewuβtes Selbst).
Concern for the impact of prenatal cocaine exposure (PCE) on human language development is based on observations of impaired performance on assessments of language skills in these children relative to non-exposed children. We investigated the effects of PCE on speech processing ability using event-related potentials (ERPs) among a sample of adolescents followed prospectively since birth. This study presents findings regarding cortical functioning in 107 prenatally cocaine-exposed (PCE) and 46 non-drug-exposed (NDE) 13-year-old adolescents. PCE and NDE groups differed in processing of auditorily presented non-words at very early sensory/phonemic processing components (N1/P2), in somewhat higher-level phonological processing components (N2), and in late high-level linguistic/memory components (P600). These findings suggest that children with PCE have atypical neural responses to spoken language stimuli during low-level phonological processing and at a later stage of processing of spoken stimuli.
Interacting parenting thoughts and behaviors, supported by key brain circuits, critically shape human infants' current and future behavior. Indeed, the parent-infant relationship provides infants with their first social environment, forming templates for what they can expect from others, how to interact with them and ultimately how they go on to themselves to be parents. This review concentrates on magnetic resonance imaging experiments of the human parent brain, which link brain physiology with parental thoughts and behaviors. After reviewing brain imaging techniques, certain social cognitive and affective concepts are reviewed, including empathy and trust-likely critical to parenting. Following that is a thorough study-by-study review of the state-of-the-art with respect to human neuroimaging studies of the parental brain-from parent brain responses to salient infant stimuli, including emotionally charged baby cries and brief visual stimuli to the latest structural brain studies. Taken together, this research suggests that networks of highly conserved hypothalamic-midbrain-limbic-paralimbic-cortical circuits act in concert to support parental brain responses to infants, including circuits for limbic emotion response and regulation. Thus, a model is presented in which infant stimuli activate sensory analysis brain regions, affect corticolimbic limbic circuits that regulate emotional response, motivation and reward related to their infant, ultimately organizing parenting impulses, thoughts and emotions into coordinated behaviors as a map for future studies. Finally, future directions towards integrated understanding of the brain basis of human parenting are outlined with profound implications for understanding and contributing to long term parent and infant mental health.
The precise nature and etiopathogenesis of borderline personality disorder (BPD) continues to elude researchers and clinicians. Yet, increasing evidence from various strands of research converges to suggest that affect dysregulation, impulsivity, and unstable relationships constitute the core features of BPD. Over the last two decades, the mentalization-based approach to BPD has attempted to provide a theoretically consistent way of conceptualizing the interrelationship between these core features of BPD, with the aim of providing clinicians with a conceptually sound and empirically supported approach to BPD and its treatment. This paper presents an extended version of this approach to BPD based on recently accumulated data. In particular, we suggest that the core features of BPD reflect impairments in different facets of mentalization, each related to impairments in relatively distinct neural circuits underlying these facets. Hence, we provide a comprehensive account of BPD by showing how its core features are related to each other in theoretically meaningful ways. More specifically, we argue that BPD is primarily associated with a low threshold for the activation of the attachment system and deactivation of controlled mentalization, linked to impairments in the ability to differentiate mental states of self and other, which lead to hypersensitivity and increased susceptibility to contagion by other people's mental states, and poor integration of cognitive and affective aspects of mentalization. The combination of these impairments may explain BPD patients' propensity for vicious interpersonal cycles, and their high levels of affect dysregulation and impulsivity. Finally, the implications of this expanded mentalization-based approach to BPD for mentalization-based treatment and treatment of BPD more generally are discussed.
This article aims to review the development of the concept of mentalization, its applications in the understanding and treatment of borderline personality disorder, and the issue of its assessment. While conceptually derivative of theory of mind, Fonagy's concept of mentalization concerns more affectively and interpersonally complex understandings of oneself and others, reflecting abilities that enable an individual not only to navigate the social world effectively but also to develop an enriched, stable sense of self. The components of mentalization can be organized around self-/other-oriented, implicit/explicit, and cognitive/affective dimensions. Concepts of mindfulness, psychological mindedness, empathy, and affect consciousness are shown to partially overlap with mentalization within these three dimensions. Mentalization is assessed by the measure of reflective function, a scale to be used adjunctively on semistructured narrative interviews such as the Adult Attachment Interview. Its validity has not been fully tested, and its usage has been hampered by the time and expense it requires. Although the concept of mentalization is a useful heuristic that enables clinicians to adopt a coherent treatment approach, it may be too broad and multifaceted to be operationalized as a marker for specific forms of psychopathology such as borderline personality disorder. Research elucidating the relationship between reflective function, overlapping concepts, and features of borderline psychopathology is needed.
This paper addresses a specific aspect of pathological mental functioning in so-called borderline patients. Analytic work with a borderline man is presented to show that an inhibition of, and defences against, the contemplation of one's own and others' mental states may be a hallmark of the resistance encountered in a number of such patients. It is claimed that the analysis of transference and countertransference is a crucial therapeutic factor in tackling this source of resistance. In doing this, the paper draws upon a topical notion from philosophy of mind and recent ideas from child development studies which help to clarify psychoanalytic ideas concerning the nature of the pathology of internal object relations underlying feelings of emptiness and social alienation in borderline functioning.
This study examined acoustic correlates of adults' ratings of infants' cries. Parents and nonparents rated 12 spontaneous cries from young infants on 8 items describing the cries' aversiveness and on 9 semantic differential items. The results indicated that the duration, the amount of dysphonation, and proportion of energy in various frequency bands were highly correlated with adults' ratings. Further, the pattern of correlations between each of the 17 rating scale items and the acoustic attributes was virtually the same, suggesting that the items represented a single underlying dimension of perceived aversiveness. Finally, no differences were found between the results for parents and nonparents. General issues in the study of cry perception are discussed.
A new off-line procedure for dealing with ocular artifacts in ERP recording is described. The procedure (EMCP) uses EOG and EEG records for individual trials in an experimental session to estimate a propagation factor which describes the relationship between the EOG and EEG traces. The propagation factor is computed after stimulus-linked variability in both traces has been removed. Different propagation factors are computed for blinks and eye movements. Tests are presented which demonstrate the validity and reliability of the procedure. ERPs derived from trials corrected by EMCP are more similar to a 'true' ERP than are ERPs derived from either uncorrected or randomly corrected trials. The procedure also reduces the difference between ERPs which are based on trials with different degrees of EOG variance. Furthermore, variability at each time point, across trials, is reduced following correction. The propagation factor decreases from frontal to parietal electrodes, and is larger for saccades than blinks. It is more consistent within experimental sessions than between sessions. The major advantage of the procedure is that it permits retention of all trials in an ERP experiment, irrespective of ocular artifact. Thus, studies of populations characterized by a high degree of artifact, and those requiring eye movements as part of the experimental task, are made possible. Furthermore, there is no need to require subjects to restrict eye movement activity. In comparison to procedures suggested by others, EMCP also has the advantage that separate correction factors are computed for blinks and movements and that these factors are based on data from the experimental session itself rather than from a separate calibration session.
This study examines the link between mental representations and maternal behavior within the intergenerational transmission of attachment. Maternal reflective functioning was hypothesized to predict the quality of mother-infant affective communication based on the AMBIANCE measure. Each of these measures was also considered as a predictor of the quality of infant attachment. The subjects were 45 mothers and their 10-14-month-old infants. Results supported each of the study's major hypotheses. The AMBIANCE measure and the reflective functioning measure had a strong negative correlation. Thus, the level of disruption in mother-infant affective communication was inversely related to the level of maternal reflective functioning. The AMBIANCE measure was also shown to be a very good predictor of infant attachment. Mothers with high AMBIANCE scores were more likely to have infants classified as disorganized or resistant, whereas mothers with low AMBIANCE scores were more likely to have infants classified as secure. A linear regression analysis indicated that maternal behavior mediates the impact of maternal reflective functioning upon infant attachment. Implications for attachment theory and early intervention are explored.
The notion that maternal reflective functioning, namely the mother's capacity to hold her baby and his mental states in mind, plays a vital role in the intergenerational transmission of attachment is investigated (Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, & Target, 2002; Fonagy et al., 1995; Slade, this volume). A parent's capacity to understand the nature and function of her own as well as her child's mental states, thus allowing her to create both a physical and psychological experience of comfort and safety for her child, is proposed. In this study of 40 mothers and their babies, maternal reflective functioning is measured using the Parent Development Interview (PDI; Aber, Slade, Berger, Bresgi, & Kaplan, 1985), and scored for reflective functioning using an addendum to Fonagy, Target, Steele, & Steele's (1998) reflective functioning scoring manual (Slade, Bernbach, Grienenberger, Levy, & Locker, 2004). The relations between maternal reflective functioning and both adult (measured in pregnancy) and infant attachment (measured at 14 months) are examined. The findings indicate that relations between adult attachment and parental reflective functioning are significant, as are relations between parental reflective functioning and infant attachment. A preliminary mediation analysis suggests that parental reflective functioning plays a crucial role in the intergenerational transmission of attachment.
Reflective functioning refers to the essential human capacity to understand behavior in light of underlying mental states and intentions. The construct, introduced by Fonagy, Steele, Steele, Moran, and Higgitt in 19915.
Fonagy , P. ,
Steele , M. ,
Moran , G. ,
Steele , H. and
Higgitt , A. 1991. The capacity for understanding mental states: The reflective self in parent and child and its significance for security of attachment. Infant Mental Health Journal, 13: 200–216. View all references, and elaborated by Fonagy and his colleagues over the course of the next decade, has had an enormous impact on developmental theory and clinical practice. This paper introduces the construct of parental reflective functioning, which refers to the parent's capacity to hold the child's mental states in mind, and begins with a review of Fonagy and his colleagues' essential ideas regarding the reflective function. Next, the applicability of this construct to parental representations of the child and the parent – child relationship is considered. A system for coding parental reflective functioning, which will serve as the organizing framework for this special issue, is described. Finally, the three papers that make up this special section are introduced.
This study sought to determine the influence of gender and parental status on the brain potentials elicited by viewing infant facial expressions. We used ERP recording during a judgement task of infant happy/distressed expression to investigate if viewer gender or parental status affects the visual cortical response at various stages of perceptual processing. ERPs were recorded in 38 adults (male/female, parents/non-parents) during processing of infant facial expressions that varied in valence and intensity. All infants were unfamiliar to viewers. The lateral occipital P110 response was much larger in women than in men, regardless of facial expression, thus indicating a gender difference in early visual processing. The occipitotemporal N160 response provided the first evidence of discrimination of expressions of discomfort and distress and demonstrated a significant gender difference within the parent group, thus suggesting a strong interactive influence of genetic predisposition and parental status on the responsivity of visual brain areas. The N245 component exhibited complete coding of the intensity of facial expression, including positive expressions. At this processing stage the cerebral responses of female and male non-parents were significantly smaller than those of parents and insensitive to differences in the intensity of infant suffering. Smaller P300 amplitudes were elicited in mothers versus fathers, especially with infant expressions of suffering. No major group differences were observed in cerebral responses to happy or comfortable expressions. These findings suggest that mere familiarity with infant faces does not explain group differences.
Addendum to reflective functioning scoring manual: For use with the parent development interview (Unpublished manuscript). The City College and Graduate
- A Slade
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- J F Grienenberger
- D Levy
- A Locker
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A. (2002). Addendum to reflective functioning scoring manual:
For use with the parent development interview (Unpublished
manuscript). The City College and Graduate Center of the
City University of New York.
The Parent Development Interview. Unpublished protocol
- J Aber
- A Slade
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- M Kaplan
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Parent Development Interview. Unpublished protocol, City
Uiniversity of New York.
A functional MRI study of maternal responses of infant facial cues
- L Strathearn
- S M Mcclure
Strathearn, L., & McClure, S. M. (2002, November). A functional
MRI study of maternal responses of infant facial cues. Paper
presented at the Annual Scientific Meeting of the Society
for Neuroscience, Washington, DC.
Handbook of mentalizing in mental health practice
- P Luyten
- P Fonagy
- B Lowyck
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